Solus Plasma: Post-Installation Update

tomscharbach

I ran into an odd issue yesterday and today. I'm not looking for support so much as offering feedback.

As background, I have a 2017 Dell Inspiron 11-3180 (AMD a9420 CPU with R5 integrated graphics, 128 GB eMMC soldered drive, 4GB RAM) that I have been using to run Red Alert 2 under Windows 10. RA2 (released 2000) has funky graphics, but I could run RA2 on the 11-3180, albeit with occasional crashes. The Windows 10 22H2 update proved incompatible with the graphics, so (alas) my 22-year-old beloved game will play no more.

I decided (in addition to moving on to other games) to set the 11-3180 up for use at the railroad, needing to run only Edge to browse and check my mail. Windows 10, as you might guess, runs slowly on the device, so I decided I would install Solus Plasma. I tested Solus Plasma on the device using my "Portable Plasma" build, a M.2 drive in a case that connects via USB (A or C). Solus Plasma tested out fine, as I expected.

At that point, I got out my Solus Plasma 4.1 installation USB (used to install Solus Plasma on my Dell Latitude 7390 laptop and on the "Portable Plasma" build in August), and installed. The "Live" session checked out, and installation went smoothly. At the end of the installation process, the computer rebooted and I had a working version of Solus Plasma.

Then things hit the fan. I ran eopkg up to install post-installation updates, and all hell broke loose. Plasma had about 570 updates to process, and the files downloaded successfully. The problems arose when eopkg started installing. At about package 175, I got a string of 10-12 orange warning messages about this or that file not being found, and then, about package 275, I got several red "failed messages" that concerned inability to run something or other, and the update borked.

I decided that the installation USB might have gone defective since August, so I built a new installation USB, and installed from the new USB. Again, the installation went normally, but the post-installation process crashed and burned.

Out of an abundance of caution, I ran complete ePSA pre-boot diagnostics on the computer, and everything checked out. I installed Ubuntu Budgie and updated it successfully. I considered building a Solus Budgie installation USB to see if the problem would repeat, but decided against it, in favor of watching today's race at Martinsville (a good choice, because Ross Chastain pulled off a stunt on the last lap that was worthy of Jimmy Johnson).

I suppose that I should add that I ran Solus Budgie on the computer for several months before I turned the computer over to Red Alert, and install Zorin and a variety of other distros on the computer in the past. This is the first time I've had a problem. The odd thing is that the problem showed up only after a successful installation.

In any event, I did a clean install of Windows 10 tonight and will live with it pending release of a new ISO. But I thought I would mention what happened just in case something needs to be corrected in the post-installation update process for Solus Plasma. I'm baffled, but not looking for a solution right now.

Oh, and RA2, RIP -- 22 years for a game is a long run.

brent

tomscharbach At about package 175, I got a string of 10-12 orange warning messages about this or that file not being found, and then, about package 275, I got several red "failed messages" that concerned inability to run something or other, and the update borked.

Handful of times I've seen the coat of many warning colors while updating and sometimes 1) I let it finish and reboot and check or, in case of borked I will 2) go stubbornly right back to sudo eopkg up til I have bent the process to my will, if you will. Not the case here?

Staudey

tomscharbach I just tried a fresh Plasma installation in a VM to make sure we didn't somehow screw the update process up, but unfortunately(?) I couldn't reproduce that behaviour. That is, there might've been those yellow messages about missing files (eopkg can be a bit tricky with e.g. symlinks in that regard, I didn't check the full output for such mostly harmless warnings), but definitely no errors that prevented the update. Not sure what exactly those errors could have been to be honest. Most issues pop up during the dependency check before installation, or during the download phase. Unless of course something is broken in general (mismatched dependencies, packaging errors, etc.), but that would've shown in my VM test too. If you ever run into that issue again it'd certainly be interesting what exactly the error messages indicate.

tomscharbach

brent Handful of times I've seen the coat of many warning colors while updating and sometimes 1) I let it finish and reboot and check or, in case of borked I will 2) go stubbornly right back to sudo eopkg up til I have bent the process to my will, if you will. Not the case here?

Twice was enough. I ran sudo eopkg check | grep Broken | awk '{print $4}' | xargs sudo eopkg it --reinstall without a successful result, though, after the second installation borked. After I reinstalled Windows 10, I ran a battery of tests on the eMMC drive to make sure that there was nothing wrong with it. At this point, I'm going to wait for the new ISO, and live with Windows 10 until then.

brent

the old xargs command (still use it to this day) may have been premature but never hurts to be sure. Gotta be the 4.1. Glad you are patient and RIP red alert.

tomscharbach

brent Gotta be the 4.1.

If I had to guess, my guess would be that something is tangled in the post-installation update process. I've installed Plasma a bunch of times in the last two months, without issue, and I have no idea why the issue now surfaced.

brent Glad you are patient ...

Patience is not one of my virtues, but in this case indifference rules the roost. I use Plasma on as my daily driver on my 7390, and the 11-3180 works fine with my portable Plasma drive plugged in. I've been using the portable Plasma drive as a computer-on-a-stick at the railroad, plugged into one of the shop computers as needed, so it isn't as if I can't use Plasma on either the railroad's shop computers or the 11-3180 if I want to do so.

I mentioned all of this only because it seemed so odd to be able to do a successful installation and then have the post-installation updates bork. I have never seen that happen, although, like you, I've had the experience of having to restart eopkg up a few times to complete the post-installation process with Budgie. It was the fatal errors this time around that surprised me.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken the time to document the update errors because the errors I got weren't anything I'd seen before, but I didn't, and my aging brain didn't track them in enough detail to be of use.

brent

tomscharbach but in this case indifference rules the roost.

It takes decades to finely hone the noble and tempered art of c'est la vie.🙂

edit/mangled french

tomscharbach

Staudey If you ever run into that issue again it'd certainly be interesting what exactly the error messages indicate.

Thanks for looking into it. I hope that I don't see it again. I've never had an issue in the past with installing Solus or upgrading post-installation. If I run into anything in the future, I'll use my head and copy the errors. It must be some kind of fluke with this particular laptop, but I can't imagine what it could be.

tomscharbach

A quick note: I did a clean install of Solus Plasma on the 11-3180 this morning, without any of the errors showing up during the post-installation update process. I have no idea what happened during the previous two installation attempts. Whatever it was, it appears to have been a fluke.

Staudey

tomscharbach Thanks for reporting back! Well, I guess it's good that it didn't happen again, though it would be interesting to know what the issue was. As I said, if it ever happens again and you could get some logs/screenshots/etc. that would be great.