[SOLVED] Blocks when portage attempts to shift to KDE 6

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

I'm a long-time fan and user of Gentoo, but have usually relied on the built-in intelligence of the portage system rather than micro-managing things myself. I've actually done nothing deliberate to bring about the transition to KDE 6. I realize that 5 has pretty much reached end-of-life. For years I've just dutifully (every week or two) done my 'emerge --update...world', resolving dependency issues as required to make things work, managing Python version transitions, etc. (I recently brought my desktop profile up to date.) The current update attempt is now, for the first time, trying to bring in KDE 6. There appear to be some differences in the process between a couple of my systems, but I will just focus on the one case, where it is actually uninstalling the KDE 5 version of an app before merging the KDE 6 version. This case cites a large number of blocks, ALMOST all of which are resolved. The exceptions are

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 9262

If you have these blocks, then you likely didn't read all of the news item.

We would need your complete Portage output though. Use a pastebin.

pietinger · Posted: Mon Sep 02, 2024 4:10 pm Post subject:

Moved from Desktop Environments to Portage & Programming.
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https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Pietinger

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Thanks @asturm for the quick reply. I did in fact read the entire news item (which you appear to have authored

. The only instructions that I perhaps did not pay necessary attention to are

- Cleanup sets and @world from any SLOT or version pinning of KDE packages
- If possible, perform the upgrade not inside a running Plasma session

The first I did not quite understand, I guess. The second is feasible, by rebooting as single user, for example...

Not trying to be obtuse, I really do appreciate your input: I've never used pastebin, will of course do so if needed. I subscribe to the "teach a man to fish" ethic--in this case meaning that I'm not looking for somebody to solve my problem, but to perhaps give me the tools to solve the problem myself. In that spirit, could you perhaps give me some idea of what to look for in the massive output from the 'emerge -pv...@world' operation? In the conflicts are certainly listed 'required by' packages from outside the kde-frameworks,kde-apps/kde-plasma universe, including libreoffice, kio-fuse, kdevelop, phonon...

If that is hard to articulate, I willl of course go the pastebin route. Many thanks...

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22618

The shown hard blocks are, in my opinion, and indication that you have told Portage that it must have two mutually incompatible packages installed at once. This is impossible, so it reports the block and exits. The advice in the news is likely because performing that cleanup would normally result in Portage no longer being instructed to need the mutually incompatible packages. This could happen if you previously had KDE Foo installed, and Plasma 6 replaces KDE Foo with KDE Bar, and does so in a way that you must remove Foo before you can install Bar. If you have directly told Portage (via @world) that you want Foo, and the attempt to install Plasma 6 generally results in Portage trying to install KDE Bar (perhaps because most people want it), then you get a conflict.

As regards a pastebin, you may find app-text/wgetpaste helpful. I suggest you install that, use it to provide us the contents of @world, a list of any sets you have enabled, the contents of those sets, and the full output of your failed command. We can try to explain to you what in that output we use to solve your problem, but it will be easier to use that as a worked example than to give you general guidance that you then must apply on your own. If you want to try this on your own, then I suggest you review @world and your sets looking for any KDE-related packages, paying particular attention to those with version qualifiers. Remove those from @world / sets, so that Portage is permitted to unmerge them if it deems fit. Don't unmerge them yourself. You only need to give Portage permission that it can do so if that is required in order to solve your problem. Retry the command. If you're still stuck, share the output.

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3416 Location: Canada

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Sorry, naive question: Contents of @world may be found in /var/lib/portage/world? Or do I need a command sequence to extract it? Thanks

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3416 Location: Canada

pietinger · Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2024 1:22 am Post subject:

Use these commands:

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

I very much appreciate the helpful pointers. (eix is an old friend, but I've never used it in quite this way before.)

Output of various eix probes, as well as the output of the 'emerge -pv' attempt, are here

https://bpa.st/I5SOA

Many thanks again.

sam_ · Developer Joined: 14 Aug 2020 Posts: 1949

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Thanks very much. That seems to have done it. Removing from @world the kf-env entry, along with the breeze-icons and one other entry caught in the soft blocks, allowed 'emerge -pv ...' to run without any unresolved blocks. I'm running the actual emerge now.

I'm not sure how those items ended up in @world. I confess that after many years of using Gentoo, I'm still not an expert on the various moving parts. I'm guessing that their being in @world meant that portage could not do the uninstall/reinstall sequence necessary to resolve the block. If true, that is a useful piece of information for addressing such unresolved blocks in the future.

Thanks again...

pietinger · Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2024 12:34 pm Post subject:

Hu · Administrator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 22618

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Thanks again to you all. I especially appreciate you taking the time to confirm my conjecture and elaborate on the reasoning. This is a very helpful enhancement to just saying "Take kf-env out of your world file" (although that initial suggestion provided the needed trigger), and goes a long way to avoiding future forum traffic (at least from me)

. It also is motivation to pay closer attention to when to use '--oneshot', which I was broadly aware of. 'Nuff said...

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Sorry, I've run into a serious snag. I was able to run through the entire emerge update operation without errors, after all your kind help, so I presumably had Plasma 6 properly installed. When I attempt to restart the system, I am left with the usual greeter login prompt. After entering my credentials, it goes away for a bit and just comes back to the login prompt.

This suggests to me that one of the processes involved in bringing up the UI has encountered some kind of error. However, I've been unable to locate any kind of log which indicates an error. When I Ctrl-Alt to a shell session, I can see that sddm processes are still there, but /var/log/messages doesn't show anything, and I didn't see any sort of complaints in logging in my home directory. (Is sddm a potential problem with Plasma 6?)

I would appreciate any help in tracking down the cause of this, because the computer(s) involved are for many purposes bricked at the moment. I am posting this from a Windows computer (no UI on Linux machines) so don't have ready access to some of the usual things like emerge --info. That is one reason I am posting here, because at least that information was posted earlier in this thread. The news item did not list any potential configuration gotchas when doing the switch, at least that I could see, so I assumed that bringing things up would not be a problem.

Don't want to assume a desperate tone here, as I assume there is probably a simple solution, but OUCH.

PS. I just did some quick checks using qlist. qlist -IS kde-plasma/* shows mostly :6 entries, but there are instances of the same app present in both :6 and :5 versions. (Probably imperfect cleanup of @world on my part.) There is a lot more of the same in qlist -IS kde-frameworks/*. Is there possibly a version skew somewhere in the startup process that is stopping things?

I've put the current contents of sddm.log, which starts from my first attempt, here:

https://bpa.st/3YEM4

Huge thanks in advance.

eschwartz · Developer Joined: 29 Oct 2023 Posts: 214

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/KDE#Starting_Plasma

You can try starting plasma *without* a greeter login such as sddm, by logging in to the tty and then running the console command to start plasma. This probably won't solve the issue, but it does mean you can see if startplasma is logging some kind of weird error to stderr that might clue you in to what happened. Unclear whether that log file actually contains output from startplasma or if there's a second logfile somewhere for that or what.

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Quick follow-up: When I try

dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-wayland

as described in the Wiki, I get the gear very briefly, and then a full-screen backdrop, probably a default, with a tree on a hillside. I have a mouse pointer, but the system is otherwise apparently frozen. I then can Ctrl-Alt-F1 to a login prompt.

Not sure of how things are sequenced, but when I boot into the stuck sddm, and Ctrl-Alt out, I seem to have 'X' running, but after using the above command I now see both 'X' and 'Xwayland' in the 'ps' output. The sddm log seems to suggest wayland all the way, but I'm not adept at interpreting this.

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 9262

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

I'm sorry, could you elaborate? Do you mean using dbus-launch with -x11 as argument?

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 9262

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

Thanks. First complains about DISPLAY not being set. When I set to ':0', it then comes back with

Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified. (repeated once)

Then

$DISPLAY is not set or cannot cnnect to the X server.

(This is after I killed Xwayland, but kept X.)

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

I've been through the news item pretty carefully. One thing that strike me is the paragraph starting with 'Plasma Wayland support has come a long way...', indicating that wayland has somehow become the default. If this is the problem, what exactly is involved in selecting X11 in the "display manager of choice"? I go many years between having to edit DM configurations, so I just need to know what to edit.

ericrhenry · n00b Joined: 02 Jul 2009 Posts: 39 Location: Bethesda, MD

I think I was able to change the display server successfully, by editing a file in sddm.conf to set DisplayServer=x11. This resulted in a lot less chatter in the sddm.log file, with no error indications of any kind, but with the same result.

I then created a dummy user (no .cache), restarted the display-manager and attempted to login again. Same relatively sparse output in sddm.log (i.e. no wayland mentions), no errors of any kind. When I Ctrl-Alt out of the hung login process, X is still running, as well as the sddm* processes. The Xorg.0.log file looks pretty nominal, with the only 'EE' indications being some missing modules (which I believe has always been the case). Obviously nothing fatal, because the log continues for a while after these, and leaves the process running. PAM authentication appears to be fine in all cases (passwords are correct).

I'm mainly at a loss for trying to find what in the chain of events is breaking...

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3416 Location: Canada