I was updating my openSUSE 12.1 to 12.2 using zypper running in a terminal window. I used the command-line instructions here SDB:System upgrade - openSUSE
Everything was going fine, I was on the last step
zypper dup
and as this was taking a while I was browsing the web and glancing over at the terminal now and then. Suddenly:
the whole screen turned olive green, with some white text. It went away too fast for me to read. There was something about asparagus (!?) and a login prompt
the whole screen turned black with a blue sad face monitor logo and a cheery message ‘Oh no! Something has gone wrong’ and to contact a system administrator
I did control-alt-delete and got a log-off prompt in a popup window. I logged off and got the same black screen with the ‘Oh no!’ message again. Repeated this a couple of times, then powered off the machine.
On power on, the usual BIOS messages don’t appear on my monitor - it is just solid black. Either my machine can no longer boot, or the upgrade has fried my video card somehow so I can’t see the BIOS boot up messages. I powered off and on the monitor, and it displayed the monitor logo and ‘no input’ message, so the monitor still works.
The computer is an Asus CG desktop, about a year old, Intel i7 with 8G RAM and 3TB disk. Graphic card is Asus NVIDIA 570Ti. It dual-boots Windows 7 64bit and openSUSE 12.1 64bit, using the Windows boot screen to choose OS. It has been running openSUSE for around a year, without problems in either Gnome or KDE. 12.1 was fully up to date before starting the dist upgrade.
Anyone seen this behavior before, any suggestions on how to recover?
Either my machine can no longer boot, or the upgrade has fried my video card
Very unlikely, but that is something you could test with a live cd.
If you have a separate /home partition I would go for a fresh install…but maybe somebody has a less intrusive solution.
It dual-boots Windows 7 64bit and openSUSE 12.1 64bit, using the Windows boot screen to choose OS
During the upgrade you can still use your workstation (even if this is not recommended);
The above is from the SDB you mention. I find this rather optimistic. I would never let any users into the system doing this and go into run level 3, when not lower.
I do not say being loged in as an end-user in the GUI did broke your system. But I read and reread you post until I was convinced that you realy was also loged in as end-user. I then went to the SDB end there it is. So I guess people did this without problems, but I would never do it IMHO.
Am 27.09.2012 12:16, schrieb hcvv:
> The above is from the SDB you mention. I find this rather optimistic.
> I would never let any users into the system doing this and go into
> run level 3, when not lower.
+1
always run level 3 here, never gave me problems during an version upgrade
>
> I do not say being loged in as an end-user in the GUI did broke your
> system. But I read and reread you post until I was convinced that
> you realy was also loged in as end-user. I then went to the SDB end
> there it is. So I guess people did this without problems, but I would
> never do it IMHO.
>
This is really bad if that is written there. Why? Because during the
upgrade process the full X + WM + DE stack is successively replaced and
can lead to a crash of the desktop environment, if the upgrade runs in
the desktop environment it means that for example 1000 packages are
upgraded and let’s say the other 1000 not -> inconsistent state, maybe
even an unbootable system if that happens at a bad position in the process.
–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.1 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.2 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10
I was very restrictive in expressing myself . Deep inside (well not too deep) I think it is unsane to replace all the software you have (un such an upgrade it is), while still merryly hummimg on as a (or maybe even more) user(s). I didn’t say so while the SDB says otherwise. May be we should ask proof from the writer ther?
Am 27.09.2012 14:16, schrieb hcvv:
>
> I was very restrictive in expressing myself . Deep inside (well not too
> deep) I think it is unsane to replace all the software you have (un such
> an upgrade it is), while still merryly hummimg on as a (or maybe even
> more) user(s). I didn’t say so while the SDB says otherwise. May be we
> should ask proof from the writer ther?
>
>
I can proof that it can explode into your face, since I did some time
ago (I am a lazy dog) such an upgrade from 11.4 to 12.1 in a virtual
machine by running the zypper dup in konsole within KDE logged
graphically in as a normal user. That broke halfway during the packages
were replaced an left a completely unusable machine. Of course there it
is a nobrainer just switch back to the snapshot before the upgrade and
repeat it in the right way, a bit difficult on real hardware.
This was the only time I did it like that and I will never again repeat
that, waste of bandwidth and waste of time.
Run level 3 logged in as root into virtual console and nothing else is
really just fine as you also proposed (have myself not tried a lower run
level) at least in my experience and I guess from your post in yours as
well. Experience is based on 6 machines at home which are upgraded in a
regular way at least once a year, so nothing professional but still
experience.
–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.1 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.2 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10
To come back on the original topic on how to solve that:
What I would do is to download the full 12.2 DVD (for the correct
architecture) boot from it and choose the upgrade option in the
installer when it asks you to do an upgrade or fresh install. That
should repair it. Then in the hopefully working system run the online
updates and reboot. After that add the extra repos you need like packman
and install what you need from them.
–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.1 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.2 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10
Am 27.09.2012 08:46, schrieb ChrisLilley:
> On power on, the usual BIOS messages don’t appear on my monitor - it is
> just solid black. Either my machine can no longer boot, or the upgrade
> has fried my video card somehow so I can’t see the BIOS boot up
> messages.
I cannot believe that this was the update itself, maybe a coincidence,
have you tried to reset the BIOS (unplug everything and check the user
manual for your machine how to reset it to factory settings)?
–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.1 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.2 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10
On 2012-09-27 12:39, Martin Helm wrote:
> Am 27.09.2012 12:16, schrieb hcvv:
> This is really bad if that is written there. Why? Because during the
> upgrade process the full X + WM + DE stack is successively replaced and
> can lead to a crash of the desktop environment, if the upgrade runs in
> the desktop environment it means that for example 1000 packages are
> upgraded and let’s say the other 1000 not -> inconsistent state, maybe
> even an unbootable system if that happens at a bad position in the process.
Absolutely. You can not do a live distribution upgrade from inside a graphical session. It can
crash, and if it does, the dup aborts in an inconsistent state.
There is a procedure that I used several times to do the dup from a different openSUSE running
on a separate partition, if you do a chroot to the partition you want to upgrade. That way it
is very difficult to crash. I used it to update the factory partition while running the stable
version, and keep working. But that was several versions ago, I don’t know if it works now.
And the wiki page says that you can do the dup inside the graphical session?
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
Am 28.09.2012 01:30, schrieb Martin Helm:
> Am 28.09.2012 00:23, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
>> And the wiki page says that you can do the dup inside the graphical session?
> It said so when this thread started, now there are pending changes to it
> Difference between revisions of "SDB:System upgrade" - openSUSE Wiki
>
It still says so
During the upgrade you can still use your workstation (even if this is
not recommended); the only downtime will be the reboot after the upgrade.
http://en.opensuse.org/Upgrade#Summary
While it does not say explicitly what and how you can use the system
during the “zypper dup”, every beginner will think you just work as
usual in your graphical environment.
–
PC: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i7-2600@3.40GHz | 16GB | KDE 4.8.4 | GeForce GT 420
ThinkPad E320: oS 12.2 x86_64 | i3@2.30GHz | 8GB | KDE 4.9.1 | HD 3000
eCAFE 800: oS 12.2 i586 | AMD Geode LX 800@500MHz | 512MB | KDE 3.5.10
+++·············
It is strongly recommended that you run this inside GNU screen or tmux to protect the upgrade
process in case anything should go wrong with the X session during the upgrade. Packages for
both screen and tmux are available in the main openSUSE repositories.
·············+±
Huh?
Wikipedia:
tmux is a software application that can be used to multiplex several virtual consoles, allowing
a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote
terminal session. It is useful for dealing with multiple programs from a command line
interface, and for separating programs from the Unix shell that started the program.[1] It
provides many of the same functions as GNU Screen, but is distributed under a BSD license.
It looks weird to me. And I still think that it is safer to run it in runlevel 3.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
On 2012-09-28 10:08, Martin Helm wrote:
> Am 28.09.2012 03:03, schrieb Carlos E. R.:
>> It looks weird to me. And I still think that it is safer to run it in runlevel 3.
>
> +1
>
I added a section on the discussion sub-page. Please add to it.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)