[SOLVED] Mageia 4 Upgrade Nightmares HELP!

[hosadeeb]

Hi there!
Upgrading from mageia 3 was a complete nightmare!
1) Many installations wouldn't upgrade, even after selecting a mirror.
2) Which resulted in not reaching the normal exit of the installer.
3) Now booting would never complete unless I select Safe Mode and then ^D at the prompt.
4) In which case ALL Gnome applications (but not Qt or KDE) would have all characters displayed as empty squares, including Mageia Control Centre itself!

Please advise, as I spent around FIVE WHOLE DAYS (Yes! You heard me right) upgrading! Installing from scratch would be another real nightmare I would very much like to avoid...

A million thanks in advance.

Hosam Adeeb Nashed

[nigelc]

Hi,
I had trouble updating and I did an "urpmi --auto-update"
And it was all ok.

[hosadeeb]

Many thanks for tip. It did complete a few more installs, but it didn't remedy the situation a whole lot, I'm afraid...
1) The booting is still not fixed,
2) And neither is the font in gnome.

[nigelc]

You can buy the disk from distrowatch:
http://distrowatch.com/
Start from scratch

[hosadeeb]

Using konsole, I tried to launch chrome-browser. Apparently, pango cannot find a font!! I have no idea what went wrong during the installation... Any idea how I can fix that manually?! This should fix the problem with the fonts in gnome, and the Mageia Control Centre.

[dtsiamasiotis]

Try to install cantarell fonts
urpmi abattis-cantarell-fonts

[doktor5000]

How did you upgrade exactly? Which of the methods did you choose from https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Rel ... m_Mageia_3
As a general hint and golden rule: Please only one problem per thread

[hosadeeb]

Hi,
I managed to solve a couple of problems, but not all. Let me relate the whole thing.

Initially, I had tried to upgrade using the mgaonline-update. But it exited with an error, but only after updating the repository mirrors. I tried to use that, but to no avail, so I resorted to the installation DVD, first without then with the ftp/http mirrors, as the DVD-alone installation refused to complete due to unsatisfied interdependencies.

The problem with fonts in Gnome was dew to pango, I discovered later when I couldn't launch chromium-browser, and resorted to launching it from the CLI. I had never dealt with pango before, but digging a bit deep I used "pango-querymodules-32 --update-cache" and that fixed the font problem.

Then, when I could finally use the Control Centre, I found there were three kernels (one from Mageia 3), and I removed the superfluous two, in the hope that the system would fix the booting sequence. Alas! It didn't... I still have to boot to safe mode then ^D to reach the GUI Log-in Screen.

The system is otherwise perfectly usable. Still, I wish there is a way to fix the booting bit.

[doktor5000]

Then, when I could finally use the Control Centre, I found there were three kernels (one from Mageia 3), and I removed the superfluous two, in the hope that the system would fix the booting sequence. Alas! It didn't... I still have to boot to safe mode then ^D to reach the GUI Log-in Screen.

The system is otherwise perfectly usable. Still, I wish there is a way to fix the booting bit.

Ok, so for the booting bit:
- what bootloader do you use
- when you say "safe mode" you mean the system drops you to an "emergency shell", right? Where you press Ctrl+D to continue?
-> what do the logs say at that point? suggested command is

Code: Select all

journalctl -xb

- or do you choose "failsafe boot" in the boot menu? But then you wouldn't be able to continue via Ctrl+D ...

[hosadeeb]

The system uses GRUB.

On booting the screen offers two options: Mageia 4 and Mageia 4 (safe mode).

[hosadeeb]

I'll check for the logs. But I should mention that, on trying the normal option, I'm left with dracut debug prompt, with error messages stating that the ram drive wouldn't load.

[doktor5000]

OK, and which entry do you choose from the bootscreen?
Your issue is not close to one of those described here? https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Err ... ade_Issues

When your system is booted, can you run the following as root to see if it helps?

Code: Select all

dracut --force

[hosadeeb]

Issue 12305 (the one at the top) is indeed what I get. Removing the option from the boot can be done using the Control Centre, I suppose. And the fstab handling is easy enough. I'm just not sure how the UUID could have changed when the drive itself was the same...

Thanks a million for pointing me to the Errata.

[doktor5000]

Please reply to the bug report that you were also affected.

Please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [SOLVED], thanks

[hosadeeb]

Both done! Many, many thanks!