upgrade to mageia3 fails, base-system package not selected

[griffin]

The DVD upgrade to Mageia3 fails if additional online repositories are selected as instructed in the Release Notes, with the message "base-system package not selected".

I did get around this by not selecting additional online respositories during the upgrade, performing the upgrade with just the DVD, and then immediately doing an update from the Mageia Control Center, but the Release Notes DVD upgrade instruction to enable the additional online repositories during the upgrade appears to be misleading.

[doktor5000]

Then please report that as a bug, after searching if it hasn't been reported yet already: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

[griffin]

Filed a bug report, and updated it to reflect that the actual message text received included "basesystem" not "base-system". However, that scenario described in which I received that message then chose *not* to specify additional online repositories, and then the DVD upgrade worked, was on an i586 laptop, and I've found a similar problem with my desktop.

My desktop is an x86_64 system. Given the DVD upgrade problem I had with my laptop, I cloned my production system hard drive to a second, identical hard drive and ran the DVD upgrade there. I did *not* select additional online repositories and the upgrade failed with 48 packages not installed, but it didn't get the "basesystem package not selected" message.

So I cycled through the DVD upgrade again, selecting additional online repositories, and the upgrade failed again, and it got the "basesystem package not selected" message. I cycled through DVD upgrade yet again but did *not* select the additional online repositories, and it finally completed, apparently successfully. However, the upgrade processing struck me as somewhat fragile and chaotic.

I understand that the people writing the upgrade scripts face challenges to accommodate several different scenarios and deliver something that always works, if possible. So perhaps I should just accept that the process isn't perfect, and just be glad that it eventually completed, but at this point I just want to say that I believe it should be cleaned up.

And while I'm bitching, I also want to say that I don't like the new desktop wallpaper and its new Mageia logo graphic.

The new Mageia logo graphic with its chinless "e" and upside-down "i" looks sophomoric and absolutely dumb to me, no matter how "quirky" and "fun" the graphics designers might think it looks after ingesting lots of alcohol and drugs. Please go back to the conventional "e" and right side up "i" in the Mageia logo graphic on the desktop, if you want to be taken seriously.

Similarly, the new desktop background looks like hanging Christmas ornaments and confetti streamers on New Years Eve, along with champagne bubbles, maybe. Or perhaps those are the tentacles of Cthulhu, lurking to eat our brains. In any case, I liked the old desktop background a whole lot better, and would like to ask how I can revert to using that.

[isadora]

Griffin, please be so kind, adding a link for your bug-report.
Thanks in advance!

[griffin]

Here it is: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10722

[isadora]

I found that I'd used the initial Mageia3 x86_64 DVD ISO file dated May 19 instead of the later one dated June 6, so I did the upgrade again. I cloned my running Mageia2 x86_64 system to a second hard drive again and ran the upgrade again, but I received the same error message when I selected the online repositories - "basesystem package not selected".

As before, I cycled through the upgrade again without selecting online repositories. That didn't complete successfully, so I cycled through the upgrade process again twice, without success. Then I selected the online repositories and cycled through the process a few more times until it upgraded all packages. I found a couple of additional problems.

I had configured my network interface in the first pass when I initially selected the online repositories, and that worked because I was able to see the mirror sites and select one. However, while cycling through the last upgrade pass I saw many messages on my firewall system: "...kernel: martian destination 127.0.0.1 from 192.168.2.2, dev eth1" followed by "last message repeated [nn] times". The upgrade process was sending out traffic to the loopback address on eth0! Apparently those requests timed out, because the upgrade downloaded several hundred packages and installed them.

I ended up with a running Mageia3 system, but it's not fully upgraded to the most recent kernel, as the mkinitrd failed.

I wouldn't say that the Mageia3 upgrade process 'worked', but rather that it staggered, limped and finally died in an infinite loop. It was repeatedly trying to run "mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3.imp 3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3". Apparently the problem is in the code for dracut, so I will be interested to learn how to resolve this problem.

I also received a Plymouth error during the Mageia3 boot process, and would like to know how to get rid of the error.

Once I got Mageia3 to boot, I tried to rerun mkinitrd. That produced the messages below, and it looks like it looped.

Code: Select all

[root@griffin boot]# mkinitrd /boot/initrd-3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3.img 3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3
I: dracut module 'network' will not be installed, because it's in the list to be omitted!
I: dracut module 'network' will not be installed, because it's in the list to be omitted!
I: *** Including module: dash ***
I: *** Including module: i18n ***
I: *** Including module: drm ***
I: *** Including module: plymouth ***
I: *** Including module: kernel-modules ***
I: *** Including module: resume ***
I: *** Including module: rootfs-block ***
I: *** Including module: terminfo ***
I: *** Including module: udev-rules ***
I: *** Including module: usrmount ***
I: *** Including module: base ***
I: *** Including module: fs-lib ***
I: *** Including module: shutdown ***
I: *** Including modules done ***
I: *** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware ***
I: *** Installing kernel module dependencies and firmware done ***
I: *** Resolving executable dependencies ***
I: *** Resolving executable dependencies done***
I: *** Stripping files ***
I: *** Stripping files done ***
I: *** Creating image file ***

gzip: stdout: No space left on device
F: dracut: creation of /boot/initrd-3.8.13.4-desktop-1.mga3.img failed

[filip]

... but I received the same error message when I selected the online repositories - "basesystem package not selected".

This is not an error as basesystem has already been installed so there is no need to be selected.

[griffin]

That link is apparently old, and it doesn't apply to the Mageia3 release DVD ISO error, which terminates the upgrade at that point. I would have continued with the upgrade if that was possible, but it was not, because I was forced to recycle.