Tips if your running Debian unstable

shotgunefx · 07-10-2006, 03:54 AM

Never, ever upgrade *****ING anything.

This should have been a post about all the little custom tweaks, scripts, etc to get everything just so.

But like an *******, before I threw it back in, I upgraded udev. Now I have an unbootable system. (Took 10 hours to notice due to restore

)

Restoring from my tar of the filesystem, it's still unbootable, still hangs with "- waiting for root fs"

I'm just about done. I'm seriously considering just quitting and throwing my headunit back in. If I have to redo the system, it will be the third time in two weeks. **** this. Sick of spending tens of hours at a time getting everything right just to get it trashed.

Sorry for the rant, but I'm just so ****ed off.

Zakabog · 07-10-2006, 05:03 AM

Ummm, yeah, so do you need help? Give me a PM with your screen name (if you have one) and I'll walk you through getting your system back up (I'm constantly installing debian on just about everything for my friend in Florida, so I've gotten quite good at it.)

intuitionsys · 07-10-2006, 11:42 AM

...or you could switch to Gentoo

shotgunefx · 07-10-2006, 12:39 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Zakabog

Ummm, yeah, so do you need help? Give me a PM with your screen name (if you have one) and I'll walk you through getting your system back up (I'm constantly installing debian on just about everything for my friend in Florida, so I've gotten quite good at it.)

Thanks for the offer. I think the answer is here. I just really needed to vent. This install has been fighting me tooth and nail.

Might be something to do with the pc/car or something totally irrelavent, but it's always something. Whenever I make some headway, another damn problem comes up.

I really wanted to finish it up this weekend while I had use of some private parking.

shotgunefx · 07-10-2006, 12:41 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by intuitionsys

...or you could switch to Gentoo

I just might give it a try.

Change · 07-10-2006, 05:53 PM

I ran some systems unstable for a while, then when unstable transitioned to a new gcc that broke all my kernel compiles, I decided it was time to stick with stable. Now I just have deb-src entries for testing and unstable so I can backport any packages I desperately need the new version of without breaking everything else. It works out fine for me.

shotgunefx · 07-10-2006, 11:57 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Change

I ran some systems unstable for a while, then when unstable transitioned to a new gcc that broke all my kernel compiles, I decided it was time to stick with stable. Now I just have deb-src entries for testing and unstable so I can backport any packages I desperately need the new version of without breaking everything else. It works out fine for me.

Most of the machines I've set up over the years were all source installs (all servers)

I need to get a better feel for the different management systems of the various distros.

Anyway, booted in rescue mode, installed udev and that fixed it. Had to reinstall nvidia & googlearth for them to work again, but all in all, easy.

Change · 07-11-2006, 02:22 AM

Ooh...if you want a good story, I screwed up a system so thoroughly trying to downgrade from unstable to stable that dpkg wouldn't work. That was fun

shotgunefx · 07-13-2006, 06:26 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by Change

Ooh...if you want a good story, I screwed up a system so thoroughly trying to downgrade from unstable to stable that dpkg wouldn't work. That was fun

Sounds like fun.

The only thing really left I would like to do is get Suspend2 working. Though the thought of trashing my system yet again is making me hesitant to build a kernel.

blk · 07-22-2006, 11:51 AM

building a kernel never trashed a system, just boot from the old kernel if something doesn't work (switch at boot prompt)

shotgunefx · 07-22-2006, 12:08 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by blk

building a kernel never trashed a system, just boot from the old kernel if something doesn't work (switch at boot prompt)

It wasn't the kernel build that killed it. Something happend when it tried to upgrade x.org, but seeing how often I'm hitting walls, I'm afraid to tempt fate.

update
But I did temp fate last week and get suspend2 going, though doesn't seem worth it. It was a PITA too. Options missing out of menuconfig, etc.

blk · 07-22-2006, 12:40 PM

had things like these on ubuntu unstable, was mostly because of new directory locations, the right symlinks made it work again (took some hours to figure out those though, as i first had to diagnose the problem)

good luck with sw.susp2, never tried it myself, all i do is boot optimizing (initng, least deamons possible, maybe i'll try linuxbios (risky as i don't have a replacement in case i brick it))