Using APT to keep DeadRat 9 up to date.

Here's a slightly out of date HOW-TO I wrote that has kept me somewhat sane when using RedHat 9 (DeadRat):

Keeping your RH9 box up to date with apt
----------------------------------------

Apt, normally a base part of the debian Linux distrobution has been ported
to RedHat and rpm. Apt makes it extremely easy to keep up to date with the
latest fixes and packages from the official RedHat distribution. Apt also
does all the dependancy checking for you. Thus keeping your installation
sane as well as up to date. It will not let you install incompatible package
sets.

- Start here:
http://apt.freshrpms.net

- download the apt for RedHat 9 package.

- install the apt for RedHat 9 package:

rpm -Uhv apt-0.5.5cnc5-fr2.i386.rpm

- update the package list:

apt-get update

You can 'cron' this command if you like. Use the really quiet mode to
prevent email unless there's an error. 'apt-get -qq update'

- upgrade your installed packages:

apt-get upgrade

You can also 'cron' this command. I prefer to use the 'download' only
switch. This way I get a email report from std out about the packages
that are ready to be updated. I can then manually do a 'apt-get update'
at my convienance and resolve conflicts if they occur.

download only mode: 'apt-get -y -q -d upgrade'

- erase old 'out of date' packages from the local cache"

apt-get autoclean

You should cron this one, for a once a week operation.

- installing new packages and their dependancies via apt:

You have to know the package name first:

browse http://ayo.freshrpms.net/redhat/9/i386/ to find the packages available.
(this pointer is stored in /etc/apt/sources.list and may update/change)

Once you find the package you want, install it.

apt-get install vim-X11

You don't need to specify the version, or the file name.

- checking on dependancies for available packages:

You can see the dependancy and package descriptions for packages in the
local cache:

apt-cache showpkg vim-X11

Use this command to decide if it's worth installing, investigating what
you're missing, etc..

kde-3.3 on freebsd 6-current

wow, teh suck!

[root@adkinson245 root]$ konqueror
konqueror: ERROR: Error in BrowserExtension::actionSlotMap(), unknown action : searchProvider
ASSERT: "data->bitmap" in kernel/qbitmap.cpp (222)
konqueror: ERROR: : couldn't create slave : Unable to create io-slave:
klauncher said: Error loading 'kio_http'.
konqueror:
konqueror: ERROR: Error in BrowserExtension::actionSlotMap(), unknown action : searchProvider

No web browsing available. The http render component works in other components, so it's just the network protocol object that seems hosed.

I can't figure this one out, but a full rebuild of kde would probably fix it. These are using the fruitsalad builds.

This thread mentions the problem. But no real resolution.

More fun with freebsd-current

I was experiencing softupdate inconsistencies and actual data-loss in 4-stable on my main workstation which has a large 30gig EIDE drive on it. Turning off softupdates and disabling dma in -stable made most of the corruption go away, but it was still there.

I decided to upgrade the workstation to freebsd-current and see if ATANG would fix my problem. So far it has fixed the disk issue, but it broke my mouse. ums(4) is losing interrupts and the mouse is unusable. I have to attribute this to my chipset and the new interrupt code. I'm going to be playing around with different settings to try to get my usb trackball back, currently I'm recompiling with NO_MIXED_MODE to see if this might fix my issue. *cross fingers*

I notice that ULE still needs some work however, I experienced several instances while buildworld/buildkernel is humming in the background where apps never get slices or not enough slices to continue correctly (most visible with knode).

So far -current is fairly stable if I ignore the ums issue and use the trackball in ps/2 mode with the adapter.

I'm totally addicted...

To natural selection (www.natural-selection.org). Thanks mike.

fun with -current

So I have several boxes at work installed with 5.0. One particular box I was having trouble with inetd connections sending reset when the box was under a significant amount of httpd load. No problem, I just adjusted inetd to start with '-R0' and problem solved.

After I did this, it occurred to me that I could easily update the box to -current by NFS mounting /usr/src and /usr/obj from the machine I track -current on and run make installkernel, reboot, installworld, etc.. to get it up to date fairly quickly. I should have stopped myself right there.

At first make installkernel complained about this line in Makefile.inc1

745: (${TARGET_ARCH} != ${MACHINE_ARCH} || ${BOOTSTRAPPING} < 501101)

Which was really weird since ${BOOTSTRAPPING} is 0, not "0" and it's complaining about string comparisons. Oh well, I changed '<' to '!=' since it would accomplish the same thing.

Installkernel succeeded and I rebooted single user into the new kernel, remounted /usr/src and /usr/obj off the -current box and began to run makeinstallworld (after mergemaster -p of course). This is where things got ugly. The install died somewhere in in the middle of nowhere leaving me with no ld-elf.so.1 and half installed new DYNAMICROOT /bin, /sbin, etc... ARGHH!! I couldn't do anything that wasn't built into the shell at this point.

THANK GOD for a statically linked mountd. I was able to finally mount /rescue off of the -current box and proceed to copy just enough to selectively 'make install' certain portions of the tree! After it was fairly stable, I re-ran 'make installworld' and succeeded. I think NO_DYNAMICROOT=yo will be in the -current boxen's make.conf from now on.