[CentOS] [OT] EPEL update?

[Fred Smith]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2018 at 12:56:05PM -0500, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Dec 2018 at 12:18, Richard <lists-centos at listmail.innovate.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > Date: Tuesday, December 04, 2018 17:08:52 +0000
> > > From: Tony Molloy <tony.molloy at ul.ie>
> > >
> > > On Mon, 2018-12-03 at 07:44 -0500, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > >> On Mon, 3 Dec 2018 at 06:00, isdtor <isdtor at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> > Hi,
> > >> >
> > >> > OT for this list, but maybe I can get some pointers - how hard is
> > >> > it to get some packages updated in EPEL? The project web site
> > >> > sends you from link to link, and the ML web interface is
> > >> > horrible. No interest here to become a package maintainer or
> > >> > regular contributor.
> > >> >
> > >>
> > >> If you have interest in being a package maintainer or regular
> > >> contributor it can be very hard to get packages updated. EPEL is
> > >> trying to mainly deal with people who want long term supported
> > >> package
> > >> sets with limited manpower to do so.
> > >>
> > >> > I have taken it upon myself to rebuild MATE from Fedora 29,
> > >> > seeing that the current EPEL-7 packages are four revisions
> > >> > behind. Also updated a few packages to their latest upstream
> > >> > version.
> > >>
> > >> If you are needing the latest upstream versions... I would say you
> > >> are
> > >> probably going to need to maintain these things yourself. As much
> > >> as you want/need the latest MATE or some other item there are other
> > >> people who don't and EPEL package maintainers can't satisfy both
> > >> demands.
> > >>
> > >> >
> > >> > _______________________________________________
> > >> > CentOS mailing list
> > >> > CentOS at centos.org
> > >> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> > >>
> > >>
> > >
> > > The problem is that the current version of Mate in the EPEL repos
> > > prevents updating from 7.5 to 7.6. There is a dependency problem
> > > with libgtop.
> > >
> > > For example trying to update marco gives you.
> > >
> > > Resolving Dependencies
> > > --> Running transaction check
> > > ---> Package marco.x86_64 0:1.16.1-3.el7 will be installed
> > > --> Processing Dependency: libgtop-2.0.so.10()(64bit) for package:
> > > marco-1.16.1-3.el7.x86_64
> > > --> Finished Dependency Resolution
> > > Error: Package: marco-1.16.1-3.el7.x86_64 (epel)
> > >            Requires: libgtop-2.0.so.10()(64bit)
> > >  You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
> > >
> > > The same dependency holds for several mate packages.
> > >
> > > So either hold back on the update until mate is updated or build it
> > > yourself are the choices..
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > >
> > > Tony.
> >
> > The epel-testing repo resolves these dependencies, so include it when
> > updating and things should be ok -- I just updated a mate desktop
> > system with no issues (it pulled about half a dozen items from
> > -testing).
> 
> 
> The maintainer of the Mate packages did not push the updated packages
> to EPEL until after CentOS-7.6 was out because he did not want to
> break 7.5 users. Now that 7.6.1810 is released, it should get promoted
> to epel in the next couple of days.

Just one more data  point: I use Mate on C7, and just updated my new-to-me
(old)laptop, and after the upgrade it boots up great, but even though
I select Mate on the login screen, all I get is the gray screen (an image
that looks like gray snow), a movable mouse pointer, and nothing else.

Per above postins, I DID enable epel-testing before doing "yum update".

If I (from that gray screen) do CTRL-ALT-BKSP I can log in on Gnome
and it works fine. if I could only figure out how to use Gnome. (why do
people like that thing? Go figure.)

so I restored my dd backup from just prior to the update and am now
back where I started.

This laptop's installation is the most disposable of my C7 machines, so\
I'm not likely to upgrade any of the others until problems such as this
(and the RAID1 problems I've been reading about, and various Nvidia-related
problems) can be avoided when upgrading.

I 'preciate all the work you Centos people do, I know you're somewhat
limited by what RH hands you, so THANKS!

Fred

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