Incredible F8 updates : DEFEAT & CAVEAT

[Beartooth]

On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 14:35:59 +0000, I Beartooth wrote:

> On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 15:10:34 -0700, Ben Brown wrote:
> 
>> It sounds to me like you've enabled the development repos. Was that
>> intentional?
> 
> 	Bless you, SIR! It was most certainly NOT intentional; I do at
> least know better than that ...

[snipperoo]

	I think I see how that error happened; I'll get to it in a moment 
-- it's a hazard that I urge the developers to guard against.

	First off, I couldn't find a safe or safe-seeming way to get rid 
of the development kernel, which I had never meant to install. I finally 
pulled out my original F8 DVD, and started ringing changes on the upgrade 
function. None of them were any help.	

	So I did a clean install, copied all the stuff I had backed up 
before the last one onto media, back onto the machine, and did a yum 
update.

	I had, however, taken the "customize now" option during install 
-- and it had gone wrong some way. Things I invariably get rid of at that 
point (such as chat, telnet, and all games -- none of which I ever touch) 
were still installed; and things I always do install weren't. (I don't 
know how the customizing had gone so wrong.)

	So I launched pirut. (I always do that soon after an install, and 
occasionally later; it gives me a lot more control than anything anaconda 
or yum can do. Try "yum remove games," for instance.)

	But pirut now defaults, as it did not use to, to expecting you to 
re-insert the media you installed from. BAD IDEA.

	Bad for two reasons. First, it's not obvious what to do about it 
-- it comes as a totally unexpected glitch, when you think you have a 
complete install you can tweak. Please put the default back!

	But much worse follows. When you do spot (or remember) what to do 
to get past the media, you get a whole list of choices -- without any 
caveat. I'm sure it was by taking one of those for development that I 
ruined the previous install -- effective not at once, but the first time 
I did an update (having long forgotten the glitch).

	It's likely I'm not alone in this. If you make a practice of 
using some of the stabler betas (Pan, a sine qua non, is still 
technically a beta -- its 132nd. Alpine, another sine qua non, is 
technically still alpha 0.99999!), you will soon find you have several 
rpms of the form <whatever>-devel -- the first time, for instance, you 
remove and re-install a malfunctioning app, they will be there in the 
list of what yum removes, and you have to put back.

	So you get in the habit, as I have for years now, when running 
pirut, of going through the -devel options. No harm has ever come of 
that, afaik, at least to me. 

	So pirut's sudden offer of development *repos* waves no red flag 
-- and you later render your whole OS unusable, at least by anyone *not* 
a developer.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck, Double Retiree,
I have precious (very precious) little idea where up is.