Entries from August 2005 ↓

–en
I was taking too long to do it. Finally I decided to take Conectiva 10 out of my home desktop and start to run Mandriva (cooker). I was already using it on my work laptop since may/june, but the kind of tests I could run on it were very limited by the hardware (a very slow laptop without any peripherals). My home desktop is much faster and gives me access to many peripherals that I can test, so I think now my “bug hunting” will work better.

Emotional note. I was running Conectiva in my desktops and servers since 1999 (Conectiva 4.0, but since 1997 I worked with RedHat). I had this version 10 install since the early public betas. It’s a strange feeling to me, after this so many years, to finally swtich to another distro. I take it as a necessary move, and that can bring up a bright future (I hope), because I know courage is to move on without looking back in regret, but use the past to fortify the path to the future.

Let’s go!

Ps.: I’ll still stick with Conectiva at my servers for some time. It would be too painful to reinstall them unless really necessary.

–pt_BR
Estava demorando muito pra fazer isso. Finalmente decidi tirar o Conectiva 10 do meu desktop de casa e passar a usar o Mandriva (cooker). Eu já estava utilizando ele no meu laptop no trabalho desde maio/junho, mas os tipos de testes que eu podia executar eram muito limitados pelo hardware (um laptop bastante lento sem nenhum periférico). Meu desktop de casa é muito mais rápido e me permite o acesso a vários periféricos que eu posso testar, então agora a minha “caça aos bugs” vai andar melhor.

Nota emocional. Eu estava usando Conectiva nos meus desktops e servidores desde 1999 (Conectiva 4.0, mas desde 1997 eu trabalhava com RedHat). Eu tinha a versão 10 instalada desde os primeiros betas públicos. �? uma sensação estranha pra mim, após tantos anos, finalmente ter que mudar para outra distribuição. Entendo que esse é um passo necessário, e que pode trazer um futuro brilhante (eu espero), porque eu sei que coragem é seguir adiante sem olhar pra trás e se arrepender, mas usar o passado para fortificar o caminho para o futuro.

Vamos nessa!

Ps.: Ainda vou manter o Conectiva em meus servidores por algum tempo. Seria muito problemático reinstalá-los, a não ser que seja realmente necessário.

This message was on the cooker mailing list, and I thought it was interesting to cite here, since it gives another idea of what’s coming with the Smart Package Manager. The discussion started about how urpmi handles the RPM Requires(post).

On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 03:11:00PM +0300, Andreas Hasenack wrote:

This is a real bug in rpm, and a bad one. Ordering packages for installation is
very important.

I have a similar behaviour with the kolab packages. There are these
three:
- kolab (requires the two below)
- kolab-webadmin (Requires(pre): kolab)
- kolab-resource-handlers (Requires(pre): kolab)

Below I have 3 cases: rpm, smart and urpmi. All installing these 3 rpms.

Due to these requirements, correct ordering dictates that kolab be
installed first. It’s what happens when I use smart to install these
rpms, for example, but rpm itself isn’t doing it. Look at the order
(and the error I get due to this incorrect ordering):

# rpm -Uvh kolab-resource-handlers/RPMS/noarch/kolab-resource-handlers-0.4.1-0.20050811.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab/RPMS/i586/kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk.i586.rpm kolab-webadmin/RPMS/noarch/kolab-webadmin-0.4.9-0.20050812.1mdk.noarch.rpm
Preparing… ########################################### [100%]
1:kolab-resource-handlerswarning: user kolab does not exist - using root1%)
warning: group kolab does not exist - using root
warning: user kolab does not exist - using root
warning: group kolab does not exist - using root
########################################### [ 33%]
Adding user apache to group kolab
Adding user cyrus to group kolab
Adding user postfix to group kolab
Adding user ldap to group kolab
2:kolab ########################################### [ 67%]
3:kolab-webadmin

See who got installed first? kolab-resource-handlers, that is, the
“Requires(pre): kolab” it has wasn’t obeyed.

smart installs them in the correct order:

# smart install kolab-resource-handlers/RPMS/noarch/kolab-resource-handlers-0.4.1-0.20050811.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab/RPMS/i586/kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk.i586.rpm kolab-webadmin/RPMS/noarch/kolab-webadmin-0.4.9-0.20050812.1mdk.noarch.rpm
(…)
Preparing… ##################################################################################### [ 0%]
Output from kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk@i586:
Adding user apache to group kolab
Adding user cyrus to group kolab
Adding user postfix to group kolab
Adding user ldap to group kolab
1:Installing kolab ##################################################################################### [ 33%]
2:Installing kolab-resource-handlers ##################################################################################### [ 66%]
3:Installing kolab-webadmin ##################################################################################### [100%]

urpmi happens to work, but it doesn’t obey the kolab-webadmin Requires(pre): kolab
restriction:

# urpmi kolab-resource-handlers/RPMS/noarch/kolab-resource-handlers-0.4.1-0.20050811.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab/RPMS/i586/kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk.i586.rpm kolab-webadmin/RPMS/noarch/kolab-webadmin-0.4.9-0.20050812.1mdk.noarch.rpm

installing kolab-webadmin/RPMS/noarch/kolab-webadmin-0.4.9-0.20050812.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab/RPMS/i586/kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk.i586.rpm kolab-resource-handlers/RPMS/noarch/kolab-resource-handlers-0.4.1-0.20050811.1mdk.noarch.rpm
Preparing… #############################################
1/3: kolab-webadmin #############################################
Adding user apache to group kolab
Adding user cyrus to group kolab
Adding user postfix to group kolab
Adding user ldap to group kolab
2/3: kolab #############################################
3/3: kolab-resource-handlers#############################################

After that, there is another observation:

On Fri, Aug 19, 2005 at 03:19:00PM +0300, Andreas Hasenack wrote:

Actually, it was pure luck. urpmi also doesn’t do proper ordering. All I
had to do was change the order in the command line:

# urpmi kolab/RPMS/i586/kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk.i586.rpm kolab-webadmin/RPMS/noarch/kolab-webadmin-0.4.9-0.20050812.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab-resource-handlers/RPMS/noarch/kolab-resource-handlers-0.4.1-0.20050811.1mdk.noarch.rpm

installing kolab-resource-handlers/RPMS/noarch/kolab-resource-handlers-0.4.1-0.20050811.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab-webadmin/RPMS/noarch/kolab-webadmin-0.4.9-0.20050812.1mdk.noarch.rpm kolab/RPMS/i586/kolab-1.9.5-0.20050801.1mdk.i586.rpm
Preparing… #############################################
1/3: kolab-resource-handlers##############warning: user kolab does not exist - using root
warning: group kolab does not exist - using root
warning: user kolab does not exist - using root
warning: group kolab does not exist - using root
###############################
Adding user apache to group kolab
Adding user cyrus to group kolab
Adding user postfix to group kolab
Adding user ldap to group kolab
2/3: kolab #############################################
3/3: kolab-webadmin #############################################

bang!
(smart doesn’t fall for this trick, btw)

You can view the complete thread on the archives with title URPMI and Requires(post).

Since I started using “smart” instead of “urpmi” in Mandriva, I noticed it was very slow sometimes, when compared to urpmi or apt-get. Today, talking with Niemeyer on #smart, he asked me to try disabling the Psyco Python JIT. It happens that I have a slow system (Pentium II 366MHz) with relatively little memory (128MB), and I need some heavy apps loaded all the time (although using Fluxbox, not KDE).

Psyco is a JIT (just-in-time compiler) for Python, that aims to make apps run faster. Niemeyer says that using it should improve smart speed very good in most systems, and his benchmarks proved that. But reading a little in Psyco docs there is a note: “Drawbacks: Psyco currently uses a lot of memory.” So, I’m pretty sure that in my specific case the problem that makes smart slow is the memory consumption, not the optimizations. Disabling it, makes smart run pretty faster to me, but it’s just because it uses less memory, so it needs less swap (and my HD is reeeealy slow).

So, if you want to test the differences of having Psyco or not on your system, try adding -o psyco=0 to your smart command line, and test. If you want to make it permanent, use smart config --set psyco=0.

Niemeyer also asked me to do some benchmarks to see why it’s faster without Psyco, but I’m too lazy to do it now. Whenever I get this done (sometime in the future) I’ll post the results.

–en

The future release of Mandriva is available as public beta! The Mandriva 2006 Beta 1 has been released for quite some time to those brave cooker users, but now it’s available to everyone who wishes to test the next release. Details can be found on the public announcement site. Have fun!

Ps.: When I get some more time I’ll make a little list of the already present improvements added by the Conectiva guys.

–pt_BR

A futura versão do Mandriva já está disponível como beta público! O Mandriva 2006 Beta 1 já estava disponível a algum tempo para os “bravos” usuários do cooker, mas agora está liberado para todos aqueles que quiserem testar a nova versão. Detalhes podem ser encontrados no site oficial do anúncio. Divirtam-se!

Ps.: Quando eu tiver um pouco mais de tempo vou fazer uma pequena lista das novidades já presentes inseridas pelo pessoal da Conectiva.

–en

Many old Conectiva users miss the great “task” packages from that distro. As the name say, those packages are intended to accomplish specific installation tasks. For example, the first ones that came into cooker were task-c-devel and task-c++-devel. Those packages are simply an empty one with many “Requires”, so when you install it, all packages related to that named task will be installed too. In that case, when you need a basic set of C/C++ tools for compiling programs, those tasks will help you with that.

- task-c-devel requires: autoconf automake binutils bison byacc gcc-cpp ctags diffutils flex gcc glib2-devel glibc-devel libslang-devel libtool libz-devel m4 make ncurses-devel patch texinfo
- task-c++-devel requires: task-c-devel gcc-c++ libstdc++-devel

More are to come! Conectiva has 64 task packages, and they are all very useful when you want to build a system from ground up (minimum install, for example). Stay tuned!

BTW, the task “porting” should be credited to Andreas Hasenack. Thanks!

Update! Ten minutes after this post, I noticed task-kde has been uploaded!

– pt_BR

Muitos antigos usuários do Conectiva sentem falta dos excelentes pacotes “task” desta distribuição. Como o próprio nome indica, tais pacotes são utilizados para executar tarefas de instalação específicas. Por exemplo, os primeiros pacotes que apareceram no cooker foram task-c-devel e task-c++-devel. Eles são simplesmente pacotes vazios com um ou mais “Requires”, de forma que quando instalados, todos os pacotes relacionados a tal tardefa são instalados também. Nesse caso, quando você necessita de um conjunto básico de ferramentas para a compilação de programas C/C++, estes pacotes irão ajudá-lo nesta tarefa.

- task-c-devel requer: autoconf automake binutils bison byacc gcc-cpp ctags diffutils flex gcc glib2-devel glibc-devel libslang-devel libtool libz-devel m4 make ncurses-devel patch texinfo
- task-c++-devel requer: task-c-devel gcc-c++ libstdc++-devel

Muitos virão! Conectiva possui 64 pacotes task, e todos eles são muito úteis quando se quer criar um sistema do nada (a partir de uma instalação mínima, por exempli). Fiquem ligados!

BTW, a “portagem” dos pacotes task deve ser creditada ao Andreas Hasenack. Valeu!

Update! Dez minutos depois deste post eu vi que subiu o task-kde!