The carpenters are here today with some final cabinet installation issues, and the pool pump died, so I’ve been pulling the old one, finding a new one, and replacing it, before the summer mustard algae in south Florida crawls over the coping, creeps into our bedroom and smothers us in our slumber.

On a red eye. I’m going out to dinner, then getting on the plane, getting in about six tomorrow morning, east coast time, so probably no posting until tomorrow, if then.

I’ll be in LA all week, starting this evening. I’m about to leave for the airport, so no more posting until tonight, if then. Be good in the various comments sections.

For those few of you who are fascinated/horrified by my computer travails, here’s the current status.

After removing Open Office and a Fortran compiler to resolve some otherwise unresolvable (at least by me) dependency issues, I finished the upgrade from Fedora Core 3 to Core 4 via yum update (at least I think I did–how do I know?). I rebooted, and it rebooted. I haven’t attempted to reinstall Open Office yet, so I don’t know if that will work, but flush with seeming victory over the machine, I decided to push my luck and go from Core 4 to Core 5.

Continue reading Fedora Update Update (Part N) →

Latest update on the Fedora upgrade saga:

Error: missing dep: libebook.so.8 for pkg openoffice.org
Error: missing dep: libedataserver.so.3 for pkg openoffice.org
Error: missing dep: libdb_cxx-4.2.so for pkg openoffice.org-libs
Error: missing dep: /lib/security/pam_loginuid.so for pkg openssh-server
Error: missing dep: gcc for pkg gcc-g77

Why is yum telling me this? Why doesn’t it just go out get the packages and fix it?

[Update about 11:15 AM EDT]

Continue reading Missing Dependencies →

OK, I got through the update, but got the following error messages at the end:

Continue reading New Fedora Update Problem →

OK, I’ve copied /var, but I can’t kill X so that I can unmount it–I’ve knocked off all the other processes, but gdmgreeter, etc. keep coming back like zombies.

How do I put a stake through its heart (at least long enough to umount /var), without a reboot at a lower sysinit level (because I’m still afraid to reboot given the partial update of yum)?

OK, per the suggestion in comments here, I decided to see just what it was that was filling up the /var partition. Here it is:

##########################################

[root@linux-station ~]# du -s /var/*
12 /var/account
773872 /var/cache
16 /var/crash
28 /var/db
16 /var/empty
60 /var/gdm
56716 /var/lib
8 /var/local
128 /var/lock
86208 /var/log
448 /var/lost+found
4 /var/mail
232 /var/named
8 /var/nis
8 /var/opt
8 /var/preserve
340 /var/run
72480 /var/spool
8 /var/tmp
8 /var/tux
13936 /var/www
24 /var/yp

#################################

I can live without the contents of cache, right?

Well, maybe not:

[root@linux-station ~]# du -s /var/cache/*
80 /var/cache/alchemist
472 /var/cache/gstreamer-0.8
1344 /var/cache/man
8 /var/cache/mod_proxy
8 /var/cache/mod_ssl
384 /var/cache/samba
771568 /var/cache/yum

#######################################

Note that it’s all cache/yum. Does that mean that if I blow it away, my ongoing yum upgrade gets clobbered? Getting rid of logs will help a little, but I suspect that the yum cache will quickly fill up the available space if I give it any. What now?

So I was updating my machine, per the instructions found here, and things were going along swimmingly for a while, until I got the following stretch of error messages:

################################
Other Transactions:
Obsoleting: compat-libstdc++.i386 0:8-3.3.4.2 with compat-libstdc++-296.i386 0:2.96-132.fc4
Obsoleting: cryptsetup.i386 0:0.1-4 with cryptsetup-luks.i386 0:1.0.1-0.fc4
Obsoleting: db4.i386 0:4.2.52-6 with compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-2.FC4
Obsoleting: db4-devel.i386 0:4.2.52-6 with compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-2.FC4
Obsoleting: db4-utils.i386 0:4.2.52-6 with compat-db.i386 0:4.2.52-2.FC4
Obsoleting: gcc-g77.i386 0:3.4.2-6.fc3 with compat-gcc-32-g77.i386 0:3.2.3-47.fc4
Obsoleting: gcc-g77.i386 0:3.4.3-22.fc3 with compat-gcc-32-g77.i386 0:3.2.3-47.fc4
Obsoleting: httpd-suexec.i386 0:2.0.52-3 with httpd.i386 0:2.0.54-10.3
Obsoleting: httpd-suexec.i386 0:2.0.52-3.1 with httpd.i386 0:2.0.54-10.3
Obsoleting: kernel-utils.i386 1:2.4-13.1.39 with smartmontools.i386 1:5.33-1.5 Obsoleting: libf2c.i386 0:3.4.2-6.fc3 with libgfortran.i386 0:4.0.2-8.fc4
Obsoleting: libf2c.i386 0:3.4.3-22.fc3 with libgfortran.i386 0:4.0.2-8.fc4
Obsoleting: libtool-libs.i386 0:1.5.6-4 with libtool-ltdl.i386 0:1.5.16.multilib2-3
Obsoleting: libtool-libs.i386 0:1.5.6-4.FC3.2 with libtool-ltdl.i386 0:1.5.16.multilib2-3
Obsoleting: memtest86.i386 0:3.2-1.1.fc3.rf with memtest86+.i386 0:1.55.1-1
Obsoleting: nautilus-media.i386 0:0.8.1-3 with nautilus.i386 0:2.10.0-4
Obsoleting: openoffice.org.i386 0:1.1.2-10 with openoffice.org-math.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
Obsoleting: openoffice.org-i18n.i386 0:1.1.2-10 with openoffice.org-langpack-sv.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
Obsoleting: openoffice.org-libs.i386 0:1.1.2-10 with openoffice.org-core.i386 1:2.0.1.1-5.1
Obsoleting: pdksh.i386 0:5.2.14-30 with ksh.i386 0:20050202-1
Obsoleting: tuxracer.i386 0:0.61-28 with ppracer.i386 0:0.3.1-4.fc4.1
Obsoleting: xscreensaver.i386 1:4.18-4 with xscreensaver-base.i386 1:4.21-4

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
libtool-ltdl-1.5.16.multi 100% |=========================| 25 kB 00:00
openoffice.org-langpack-s 100% |=========================| 13 MB 00:39
smartmontools-5.33-1.5.i3 100% |=========================| 257 kB 00:00
microcode_ctl-1.12-1.24_F 100% |=========================| 238 kB 00:01
openoffice.org-langpack-t 100% |=========================| 12 MB 00:33
openoffice.org-langpack-z 100% |=========================| 13 MB 00:38
openoffice.org-langpack-g 100% |=========================| 755 kB 00:02
openoffice.org-langpack-n 100% |=========================| 12 MB 00:33
httpd-2.0.54-10.3.i386.rp 100% |=========================| 935 kB 00:03
openoffice.org-langpack-a 100% |=========================| 4.1 MB 00:13
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/bin/yum”, line 8, in ?
yummain.main(sys.argv[1:])
File “/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py”, line 136, in main
base.doTransaction()
File “/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py”, line 589, in doTransaction
problems = self.downloadPkgs(downloadpkgs)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/yum/__init__.py”, line 382, in downloadPkgs
mylocal = repo.get(relative=remote, local=local, checkfunc=checkfunc)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/yum/repos.py”, line 443, in get
checkfunc=checkfunc)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py”, line 414, in urlgrab
return self._mirror_try(func, url, kw)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py”, line 400, in _mirror_try
return func_ref( *(fullurl,), **kwargs )
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 595, in urlgrab
return self._retry(opts, retryfunc, url, filename)
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 527, in _retry
return apply(func, (opts,) + args, {})
File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 583, in retryfunc
fo._do_grab()[root@linux-station home]#

File “/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/urlgrabber/grabber.py”, line 852, in _do_grab
new_fo.write(block)
IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

#######################################

At which point it returned to the root prompt.

What now?

[Update at noon]

Oops! /var is full.

######################################

[root@linux-station home]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda7 10412484 3489804 6393744 36% /
/dev/hda1 101086 8478 87389 9% /boot
none 257904 0 257904 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda2 100790036 44456020 51214104 47% /home
/dev/hda3 1004052 20080 932968 3% /tmp
/dev/hda5 1004024 1000672 0 100% /var
#######################################

What do I do about that? Any magic tools that can repartition a live drive?

[Update on Monday evening]

OK, I guess the question is, given that (in theory) I’ve done a partial update from Core 3 to Core 4, but it bombed out part way through, is the machine rebootable? Or do I have to figure out a way to install and run gparted under the current running shell? I don’t want to reboot into a Livedisk for repartioning, only to find out that my OS is FUBAR, even with the bigger partition, on reboot.

OK, I’m following the directions for Memtest86. I seem to be having floppy problems–memtest fails when trying to write to the boot disk. The instructions say that I can put the boot image in a directory and point to it from LILO. Unfortunately, I’m not running LILO, and it has no instructions for doing this from grub. I’m reading the grub manual, but it’s not clear what commands I need to run to tell it to boot from the image. I tried > kernel /root/memtest/memtest.bin, and I get the message “Error 12: Invalid device requested.

Any suggestions?

[Update about 2 PM EDT]

Thanks for all the help. I found the rpm of memtest86 (they made one for FC-3–who knew?) and installed it (by the way, my problems with downloading files via Firefox seemed to disappear when I logged into X as root). I ran it and it found memory errors immediately. I pulled the stick, and remounted it, and it still has problems. I guess I need new memory before I do anything else with the machine.

[Evening update]

Bought a new stick of DDR 2700, Initial testing shows no problems, so it was definitely bad memory. My next question, per Pete Zaitcev’s advice:

What I would do in your place would be to upgrade with yum. It’s as simple as one-two:

one: point /etc/yum.conf to FC4, update distro

two: FC4 moves to /etc/yum.repos.d, edit its contents to point to FC5, update distro.

How does one “point to” a distro? Here’s my yum.conf now:
###########################
[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
retries=20
obsoletes=1
gpgcheck=1

# PUT YOUR REPOS HERE OR IN separate files named file.repo
# in /etc/yum.repos.d
###########################

So what am I supposed to do to upgrade from FC 3 to FC 4 and then to FC 5?