This morning I updated my workstation and during the process it has crashed my system leaving me with a KDE loging on a Wayland desktop. There is a login window offered but one logged in all I get is my KeepassXC loging screen and nothing else.
I thought it mght be an hardware problem so went to my laptop and the same thing happened so now I have lost an hour of working time. Fortunately my workstation has btrfs and I can go back to earlier snapshots but what is best way to solve this problem?
Did you upgrade using a TTY or from within the GUI?
Please see
https://forums.opensuse.org/t/heads-up-please-upgrade-tumbleweed-to-20240311-via-zypper-dup-in-a-tty/173121/1
I have tried the plasma 6 upgrade a couple of times, both via TTY: As soon as the downloads fiish, when update begins I am thrown out of the session and back to the login screen. My system still works, but there have been changes, for example my taskbar icons are all gone.
There are no such things in a TTY terminal, so let’s be clear:
Oops… I was not in TTY terminal Thanks for clearing this up for me. I thought a Konsole window was the equivalent of a TTY window. Followed the TTY directions (correctly) and now all is well. Thanks
Konsole has the same basic functionalities so it can be used in most cases, but it is a graphical app that needs a functional graphics desktop environment behind it, but when you upgrade the desktop environment itself (like with the Plasma6 upgrade) the desktop might not work properly when old files it needs are partially replaced by new incompatible ones; a basic TTY (or VT as it is also known) does not crash or close until you reboot the system and so is safer for system upgrades.
Using TTY zypper up worked but I received an error message at the end:
error: can't create transaction lock on /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm/.rpm.lock (Read-only file system)
There are several of these and cannot ignore.
What should I do.
I am working on laptop so cannot cut and paste unless you need all the data. Can somebody help me sort this out please?
Do not use zypper up on Tumbleweed.
Do not use zypper up on Tumbleweed.
Do not use zypper up on Tumbleweed.
As to the transaction lock issue, I’m not sure what the issue is, unless you’re not running your zypper transaction as a privileged user (i.e. root)
Can you paste here the result of:
ls -la /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm/
Here is what I have:-
alastair@HP-Z640-1:~> ls -la /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm
total 254172
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 56 Mar 3 19:21 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6 Mar 3 19:21 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 67641344 Mar 4 22:23 Index.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 192629712 Mar 4 22:23 Packages.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 20 11:14 .rpm.lock
alastair@HP-Z640-1:~>
Of course these are from running an earlier snapshot, hence Mar 4 date. Should I reboot to the new update now and try?
My typo. I did of course run zypper dup from root.
Are you sure that you are trying the upgrade from a writable snapshot? The error message implies that to try to do a zypper dup on a read-only snapshot…
This can’t work…
My typo. I copied the text into another machine in order to get to this forum. I could not do anything with the problem system, possibly through ignorance but the NM was down so I just entered the first line with error.
It seems from what you say that I have cocked up my backups. I did not knowingly create RO backups but this would explain the problems I have had with NM.
Would you have time to look at my snapper config?
Looks OK and the (failing?) upgrade should not have broken it.
If your system actually boots to the (incomplete?) upgraded snapshot, you can open a VT (CTRL+ALT+F4), login as root and give “zypper dup” another chance at completing the upgrade.
Please check
https://forums.opensuse.org/t/lost-desktop-and-network-after-tw-plasma-6-update/173122
if you have no NetworkManager connection.
Hi hui,
further to this I find in the snapper manual:-
When booting a snapshot, the parts of the file system included in the snapshot are mounted read-only; all other file systems and parts that are excluded from snapshots are mounted read-write and can be modified.
Important
That might be the issue but I am well out of my depth now.
If you read further down the article, you will find the instruction how to make a RO snapshot (a good one without issues) into a RW snapshot:
sudo snapper rollback
It is confusing. Mostly because people use these terms more or less at random, often assuming that the others will understand the details of what they mean, but not say. 
konsole is a KDE application (running in the GUI) that is about the same as e.g. Xterm. It is an emulator of an “ANSI-Terminal”, that itself is a more sophisticated form of a real TTY (one that supports e.g. colours, extra fonts like line drawing characters, all managed by so called Esc sequencies as described in the corresponding ANSI standard and based upon the VT125, etc. hardware).
The “console” is the terminal (originally a physical TTY or like VT125, etc) connected to the computer as interface for the operator. On Linux systems (where the operator, system manager and end-user are often one and the same person) it is a TTY (or better) emulated on the monitor and keyboard of the PC. Either just that one console (in non-graphical system levels). But the Display Manager offers often more of them (called “logical consoles”), reachable through the key combinations Ctrl-Alt-Fn.
It is often recommended to log out of all graphical sessions, and use one of the logical consoles, or even go into single-user level, to do more intricate updates/upgrades. I am a LEAP user and certainly go into single-user when upgrading from e.g. 15.5 > 15.6. I guess that doing so for Tumbleweed is often a good idea.
Much too difficult for me to follow. I can select a snapshot from the boot screen but …
Step 1 is OK, I can find a snapshot I am confident will work but then how can I log into the system as in step 2? Do I then allow the snapshot to be used to start the installation and then go to a terminal?
Step 1 is in the bootloader screen. When you click/select a snapshot there, your system will boot up and present you with the login screen where you enter your password for your user…this is alredy step 2.
Then you need to make this snapshot RW by issuing
sudo snapper rollback
After that you will have a RW snapshot in bootloader screen which you can choose to login and upgrade your system.
Ok, I am in that snapshot now which is how I am able to work here. So all I have to do is issue the command but can I do it from a gui terminal or go to a TTY ?