On 07/28/2016 02:57 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 07/28/2016 01:44 PM, Yasha Karant wrote:
>> I was updating an application on my SL7.1 laptop workstation, not 
>> using a terminal screen yum but the GUI interface that automagically 
>> appears after "clicking" on the downloaded RPM in the web browser 
>> download window. Unfortunately, the ISP network failed during the 
>> update (that evidently downloaded other RPMs required).  The update 
>> did not appear to be re-entrant recoverable. ...
> yum-complete-transaction may have saved you a whole lot of work. It's 
> in the 'yum-utils' package and it attempts to re-enter and complete 
> the yum transaction.  The yum database is semi-atomic and has a 
> transactional characteristic.
>
> Yum and the GUI updaters are all supposed to download everything 
> before updating anything, but depending upon exactly which RPM 
> installer you were using it may have behaved differently.

I did try that from a scrolling screen, but to no avail -- something may 
have broken yum for all I know.  I did look at the logs in /var but 
found no smoking gun(s).  There were suggested hints displayed by yum 
when I invoked it on the scrolling screen (the GUI had been absolutely 
silent -- just an activity indicator that halted momentarily then 
continued ad naseum that made me suspicious something was amiss -- and 
only after GUI failure did I continue with the scrolling screen method 
-- a different F key screen than the one with Xwindows).   The 802.11 
connection was not lost, but DNS, etc., was -- a web browser could not 
get out. It is possible that one of the automagic updates needed to 
satisfy the update of the package upon which I was updating pulled in 
some network utility/resource update and that froze the Internet 
Protocol Suite stack -- but the 802.11 MAC was fine.  It definitely 
smashed Xwindows.

What I found most annoying was with the SL7.2 ISO 4 Gbyte installation 
DVD in the drive, yum upgrade did find it and did claim to succeed -- 
but the machine would not boot.  Only a fresh install smashing 
(formatting) the boot, /, /usr, and swap partitions allowed it to 
complete and boot.  Also, the fact that the current 7.2 MATE evidently 
has issues with a home directory that worked with a 7.1 MATE (7.2 
current MATE caja failed) was not pleasing; I still have the previous 
home directory and can attempt to find which .<foo> file(s) contained 
the offending configuration(s).

In any event, I do now have a working 7.2 laptop and am not looking 
forward to 7.3 unless the yum upgrade path works, or the GUI booted 
installer also has an update "button" that will not smash any existing 
directories (except for swap that only has ephemeral data/files as I 
understand things).  I understand that 8 will be a fresh install of all 
of the systems partitions.

A question:  does yumex (that is working and installed on this system) 
allow for easy control of which "installed" repositories are used?

A second question:  if I want to go from "old" partitions to LVM 
layouts, do I need two LVM "parts" on a drive so that /home /usr/local 
/opt and the like do not have to be smashed upon a full install?  At 
some point I shall need to install a hard drive and use LVM rather than 
the "old" partition scheme.

Yasha Karant