how to tell when apper's done, so i can kill it

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#1

My goal is to try to get mono running on some (ANY) linux in virtualbox, as a simple test. Last time I used linux was 15 years ago, ubuntu, incredibly easy, but much has changed.

I dnlded OS 13.2, installed into VM, tried the 1-click install on mono’s site, but yast is blocked by packagekit. Yast can’t kill PK, but killing PK from the console is no good, as apparently apper immediately resurrects PK.

Other posts say use zypper to update, refresh, etc, but it too is blocked by packagekit.

I’ve tried to remove apper, but every way I’ve seen recommended requires invocation of some command that’s blocked by packagekit, infinity. It’s like apper’s a really well written virus.

So, I’m advised to just wait a few hours till apper’s done. How can I tell when it’s done? How can I tell if it’s actually doing anything? When I bring up the apper app and click anything in its window, I just get a little spinner.

My VM network’s good, firefox serves up pages no problem.

#2

I found these instructions on disabling apper: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Apper_troubleshooting

The last line reads, “…then if you like Apper interface, you can enable it again.”

Hahahahahah. Good one.

#3

I’ll post what I’m trying as I go along, thinking maybe my experiences can serve as a warning to others.

I disabled apper per the previously-mentioned instructions, rebooted, tried the 1-click mono install, yast hangs at 53% while launching package manager or somesuch, but it doesn’t say packagekit is blocking it, so, there’s that. Can’t kill yast, request reboot via KDE. And…reboot blocked by yast. Can yast block a VM reset? Not so much.

At cmd line, rpm rebuilddb, zypper clean, then zypper ref.

Zypper goes into high gear, little buddy’s working hard, retrieving and building various repositories, with every line it’s got a nifty little spinning indicator so I know it’s not sleeping on the job, then shows “[done]” at each step! Finally, I’m bending this beast to my will!

Oh, noes, at “Retrieving repository ‘openSUSE-13.2-Update’ metadata”, the spinner has stopped. Is zypper MIA? Tune in next time, for “As the openSUSE worm turns.”

#4

It is just my preference, but I have neither PackageKit nor Apper installed.

#5

About an hour later, all of a sudden, zypper woke up and shouted "timeout exceeded when accessing http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.2/repodata/somelongguid-updateinfo.xml.gz."

Luckily I was here or it would have auto-retried for another hour.

So, it skipped that and moved on to retrieving “opensuse-13.2-update-non-oss” metadata and says file “repomd.xml” is unsigned.

Bad sign, or business as usual?

So, I’ll trying the 1-click mono install again because, by golly, this is fun! And…it locks up at 3% while loading the package manager. Yay!

#6

I think they’re no longer the source of my troubles at this point, but ya, I’m with you there.

#7

A little instruction. You can not have 2 package installers running at the same time. You can stop by killing the process. First run ps -A this lists all processes . Find the one you want to stop. At the left you will see a number this is the process ID or PSI. type kill PSI (the number found) to kill the process

Apper (packagekit) is started at log in and periodically to check for updates this usually only lasts a couple of minuets so normally you don’t have to kill it unless it gets stuck just wait a bit.

So what you describe is not in any way “normal” so it must be something you did. I admit not knowing what that could be having never done what ever it was myself. It is unclear if you did the full update before moving on to customizing things. If you have turned off appr then you don’t get notified so you have to do a zypper up or go into yast and online updates to get the needed updated packages. There are bunch since 13.2 has been around a bit.

It may also help to see what repos you have please post output of zypper lr -d in code tags. If you mix versions you can cause major problems for yourself :open_mouth:

#8

“A little instruction. You can not have 2 package installers running at the same time. You can stop by killing the process. First run ps -A this lists all processes . Find the one you want to stop.”

Which two package installers are you referring to? I already got rid of apper, thank God, and now only yast is running. Well, it’s hung, but AFAICT packagekit is no longer running, don’t see it in the process list. Is there something else I need to kill?

“Apper (packagekit) is started at log in and periodically to check for updates this usually only lasts a couple of minuets so normally you don’t have to kill it unless it gets stuck just wait a bit.”

I think it was hung, for the same timeout problem that zypper had.

“So what you describe is not in any way “normal” so it must be something you did.”

I installed 13.2 straight from the iso into a VM, then I clicked the 1-click install for mono. Boom, bang, crash, do not pass go.

“you have to do a zypper up or go into yast”

Zypper hangs then eventually times out with the error message I listed. Given that zypper was able to pull other repo items, wouldn’t this indicate some kind of problem on the repo side of things?

“It may also help to see what repos you have please post output of zypper lr -d in code tags.”

I’ll work on that, gotta install guest additions first to copy/paste it out for ya. In fact, I think I’ll do a quick reinstall first since it only takes a minute, and try disabling apper from the start, then hit zypper up to see if I get the same error.

#9

Wait a second! That was my original question. How do I know if apper gets stuck? Is there some way to tell, short of packet sniffing, whether it’s actually doing anything?

#10

check with ps command. An attempt to run any other updater ie yast or zypper will result in an error if it is. The error is very clear.

Appr is a bit of a problem child and you don’t have to run it many don’t. Just remember that if you don’t you have to manually check for updates.

well any other. You can not have two programs trying to update the system at the same time. That leads to madness

At times the mirror you are being directed to may be updating or even down or unreachable due to DOS attacks etc. It happens

Oh yes I forgot you are running in a VM. Be sure that the actual URL is reachable via a browser or other method. You behind a firewall or gateway??

So I’m guessing that one of the repos URLs are timing out for you but you have not shown us your repo list

zypper lr -d

just copy past it here

#11

Aight, once I get it reinstalled, will do.

This time around, I tried the option “Add Online Repos” during install. First time, I used the default selections of both Main OSS and Non-OSS, and it hung while downloading flash.

Second time around, I selected only the OSS, and it got almost all the way done downloading, only to hang when it got to “poppler-data.” I assumed that was a fluke, so I did the whole thing again, OSS-only, and again it hung at poppler-data. What in the wide wide world of sports is wrong with this thing.

#12

I am able to hit http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.2/repodata via the browser in the VM (and host), and can pull down the file that zypper timed out on.

#13

Not clear what you are doing updates are in the update repo. Get the updates before you try doing anything else should be in the repo list by default. How much memory have you given the vm and how big a virtual drive??

#14

Here ya go…this is from a brand spanking new install.

# | Alias                     | Name                               | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                             | Service
--+---------------------------+------------------------------------+---------+---------+----------+--------+-----------------------------------------------------------------+--------
1 | openSUSE-13.2-0           | openSUSE-13.2-0                    | Yes     | No      |   99     | yast2  | cd:///?devices=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VBOX_CD-ROM_VB2-01700376     |        
2 | repo-debug                | openSUSE-13.2-Debug                | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/  |        
3 | repo-debug-update         | openSUSE-13.2-Update-Debug         | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/13.2/                 |        
4 | repo-debug-update-non-oss | openSUSE-13.2-Update-Debug-Non-Oss | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/13.2-non-oss/         |        
5 | repo-non-oss              | openSUSE-13.2-Non-Oss              | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/repo/non-oss/    |        
6 | repo-oss                  | openSUSE-13.2-Oss                  | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/        |        
7 | repo-source               | openSUSE-13.2-Source               | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/ |        
8 | repo-update               | openSUSE-13.2-Update               | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.2/                       |        
9 | repo-update-non-oss       | openSUSE-13.2-Update-Non-Oss       | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.2-non-oss/               |
#15

16gb ram, but I fumbled fingered and gave it a 20gb virtual drive instead of 200. Doh. Maybe that’s filling up?

#16

Just checking memory is a good place to mess things up in a VM

You can remove or diasble the first one it is the install media. If not present it may cause time out errors

#17

On 2015-09-13 22:06, inaworldofhurt wrote:
> I’ll work on that, gotta install guest additions first to copy/paste it
> out for ya. In fact, I think I’ll do a quick reinstall first since it
> only takes a minute, and try disabling apper from the start, then hit
> zypper up to see if I get the same error.

While on installation screen of the ISO, go to the package management
section and remove apper and friends.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

#18

On 2015-09-14 00:06, inaworldofhurt wrote:

> Code:
> --------------------
> # | Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service
> --±--------------------------±-----------------------------------±--------±--------±---------±-------±----------------------------------------------------------------±-------
> 1 | openSUSE-13.2-0 | openSUSE-13.2-0 | Yes | No | 99 | yast2 | cd:///?devices=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-VBOX_CD-ROM_VB2-01700376 |
> 2 | repo-debug | openSUSE-13.2-Debug | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/ |
> 3 | repo-debug-update | openSUSE-13.2-Update-Debug | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/13.2/ |
> 4 | repo-debug-update-non-oss | openSUSE-13.2-Update-Debug-Non-Oss | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/13.2-non-oss/ |
> 5 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-13.2-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/repo/non-oss/ |
> 6 | repo-oss | openSUSE-13.2-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/ |
> 7 | repo-source | openSUSE-13.2-Source | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/13.2/repo/oss/ |
> 8 | repo-update | openSUSE-13.2-Update | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.2/ |
> 9 | repo-update-non-oss | openSUSE-13.2-Update-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/update/13.2-non-oss/ |
>
>
> --------------------

Ok, you probably want to disable repo number 1. The rest are correct as
they are.

nexts steps are:


su -
zypper --verbose refresh
zypper patch

and paste here what you get.

I think that you either have a network problem or are hitting a bad mirror.

By the way, 16 GB ram for the virtual machine is a lot. My virtual
machines have less than one. Depends on what you want them for.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.

(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” (Minas Tirith))

#19

By jove I think you got it. I disabled apper, killed packagekit, disabled all repos, and the 1-click install is working.

Thanks!

#20

Thanks, I think bad mirror would explain a lot. And, it doesn’t implicate me, so I’m going with that.

I used 16gb originally for the heck of it. I wanna see if I can port some asp.net web api stuff over to mono, w. mysql as the backend.