[GTALUG] Fedora 27 packagekit reboot and install glitch

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh at mimosa.com
Fri May 18 23:32:42 EDT 2018


| From: Russell via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| On May 17, 2018 8:46:25 AM EDT, "D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk" <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:
| >[quoting (by Howard) got somewhat mucked up (by Russell's MUA) due to
| >long 
| >lines.  At least I think that that is what happened.]
| 
| I don't know whats happening there. It seems to be intermittent and not 
| just with this list but personal traffic as well.

Your lines are long (a whole paragraph long).  Something is quoting by
putting a > at the start of a line.  Then something is folding them
without adding > at each fold.

| >| Now libnsl is prised out of glibc and stands on its own as libnsl2.
| >| 
| >| Ostensibly this provides enhanced support for Transport Independant
| >RPC 
| >| on IPv6 networks. However my first attempt to revert back to libnsl
| >for 
| >| portmapping, as others using sane backends on Fedora have recommended
| >
| >| trying, borked the socket completely. Clearly I missed something,
| >which 
| >| thusfar appears to be above my pay grade.
| >
| >I've not had any problems and have been blissfully ignorant of this
| >issue.  I do use SANE.
| 
| Currently on F28 my Brother multifunction scanner printer only prints, 
| no scanner. This seems to be an issue with brscan software. Everything 
| works on F27, however that version is using init to do the port mapping, 
| not systemd.

I am using a Brother printer / scanner.  I strongly dislike that I
have to use a proprietary driver for the printer and another for the
scanner.  I do like it that Brother has produced and maintained them.

I actually replaced the DCP-7065DN with an MFC-L2730DW because it
would natively handle postscript but I don't know about how to get the
right ppd so I'm still using the proprietary printer driver.

More to the point: the printer and the scanner work fine on my Fedora
28.  I don't run the brscan-skey that detects button presses and
initiates scanning.  I don't think that anything is started by systemd
(but brscan-skey might want to be).

I probably installed the drivers under Fedora 26 and they survived the
upgrades to 27 and 28.

| >I feel (but don't know for sure) that glibc is way too big and should
| >be modularized.  Changing this kind of thing is hard because it
| >ripples down to the many many clients of glibc.
| 
| Another of my bucket list items to study are Fedora Flatpacks. This 
| seems to be a next wave for connecting developers to the end users and 
| vice versa. In essence I see this emerging tech as one of dynamic 
| modularity vs static monolithity.

Flatpacks are not a Fedora thing, they are a freedesktop.org thing.

Flatpacks carry their own runtime with them.  But less than a virtual
machine's runtime.  I don't like it because any bug in a runtime
library will need to be fixed in each copy of it: once for every
flatpack and once for the system as a whole.

On the other hand, flatpacks allow distro builders to stop packaging
applications that have flatpacks.

| >| Currently my reading suggests I should be looking to how memory 
| >| allocation is being managed in F28 to provide for better dynamic 
| >| linking.
| >
| >Why?  Is this connected to problems that you are experiencing?
| 
| My F28 systemd targets aren't working for brscan.

How have you made a connection between brscan and memory allocation?

| >
| >| I remember a Tlug presentation from quite a number of years ago 
| >| titled, "Better Living Through Dynamic Linking."
| >| 
| >| Now I wish I'd kept better notes, you never know when this sort of 
| >| esoteric stuff will come in handy.
| >
| >David Collier-Brown's talk was interesting.  But the mechanism is very
| >powerful and easy to get wrong.  What problem do you have that it
| >might solve?
| 
| Systemd contiguation of memory allocation units under IPv6 addressing.

How are you connecting "memory allocation" with IPv6 addressing?

| Systemd is kind of like omnibus legislation, you really have to read and 
| get all the fine print or something you like, need or want gets 
| steamrollered.

systemd is intricate.  I certainly don't understand all the things
that it does.  But Pottering does claim that it is modular.

| I remember from the Dynamic Linking talk that some wags would say, all 
| high sierra like; "your talking about dlls, thats M$ cruft. This is 
| Linux, we don't need no stinkin dlls."

UNIX has had them since before Windows.  Just look at all the .so
files.

What UNIX does differently is the idea of major and minor versions:
$MAJOR.$MINOR.  A program specifies the Major version it requires and
the system provides the highest minor version available for that major
version.  Interfaces can change only when major versions are changed.

The Windows implementation did not have any such provision so
substitutions often went wrong.  Various creative failure modes
ensued, but I won't bore you with the details.

| It looks like I do need them, in spades now that I have adopted systemd 
| instruction sets.

You've been using them for a long time.  Probably since LINUX changed
from a.out to ELF more than 20 years ago.
<https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1052>

I don't see how systemd changes anything to do with shared libraries.


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