On 27/01/17 23:28, John Pilkington wrote:
> On 27/01/17 22:08, Mark Stodola wrote:
>> On 01/27/2017 01:42 PM, John Pilkington wrote:
>>> As I noted, my system seems to have updated happily.  I started it from
>>> yumex by enabling the rolling repos.  But I've just been examining my
>>> grandson's, which yesterday 'welcomed' him to emergency mode. I'm afraid
>>> he doesn't fit the SL target user profile and his access time is
>>> limited.
>>>
>>> yum history shows 531 packages auto-updated two days ago, but clearly
>>> the process was interrupted and I'm not familiar with enabling net
>>> access on a broken system.  I'm hoping that I shall be able to use a 7.3
>>> installation disk to recover.
>>>
>>> John P
>>
>> Just to clarify, did you enable the 7x or the actual rolling repo?  The
>> rolling repo is not meant for production use, but for testing packages
>> before posting them to the stable trees (i.e. 7.2, 7.3).  To stay on the
>> latest release, you want to use 7x, which is a symlink to the latest
>> stable branch.
>>
>> -Mark
>>
> I'm using yumex and the names shown were changed automatically during my
> (successful) update.  Now I have sl, sl-security, sl-fastbugs enabled
> and shown as 7.3   The only option I see now is rolling (pre-release).
> No 7x
>
> IIRC, earlier this week I had the 7x option set but no major update had
> happened.   Around 16:00 UTC on 26 Jan I changed from 7x to rolling
> repos in the GUI and started a manual update;  after the update a set of
> security updates showed and I applied those too.  I don't think I did
> reboot between these actions - not what I reported earlier.
>
> Both these systems have been getting routine auto updates for the past
> several months, from 7x, but only one is now giving trouble, probably
> from a mid-process closedown during the major auto update.  That box is
> closed down often.  Mine is usually on but no major update happened
> until I forced it.  I think that was a day later - and I had therefore
> assumed that my grandson's box would *not* have got auto 7.3
>
> I hope that's clear  :-)

An update before anyone feels an urge to offer advice.  After
'echo 7x > /etc/yum/vars/slreleasever' , as suggested in the Release 
Notes, I'm seeing the expected repos again.  I've disabled auto updates 
for now.

The other box runs the kde-live DVD with no problem but I couldn't see 
an obvious recovery route - so will try installing from that on a second 
disk.  IIUC shrinking the xfs partition isn't a (reasonable) option.

John