Hey, got tired of dealing with progressively more broken Kubuntu upgrades and thought I’d give Netrunner a spin. Currently regretting it because the desktop does not start up on boot. Maybe there’s a conflict between KDE4 & KDE5? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Only if you kept your home folder, Plasma 5 will try to import and convert your kde4 settings, but this can take a while. When I tried this on my test system it took somewhere between 5 and 20 minutes to complete and sometimes failed miserably with no desktop loading (a ctrl+alt+backspace usually fixed this)…
Anyway, this might also be a graphics driver or some other issue, what are your system specs.
Hm, in my haste it seems I made things worse. I was migrating from Kubuntu 15.04 (which already ran Plasma 5) but my home folder was encrypted – and my efforts to re-mount my encrypted folder failed for lack of the encryption passphrase. So I performed a clean install and formatted my /home partition. (I have backups of my important settings & can reinstall 3rd party software as needed.)
Anyway, I’ve got an octo-core AMD Athlon 64 FX processor & twin nVidia video cards (each a 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GTX 550 Ti) – my two monitors are connected to just the one card, and this is a setup that both Kubuntu 15.04 & the Netrunner DVD had no problems with. I assumed a clean install would get me an operational desktop as I had given up trying to “migrate” anything … I’m not going back to Grandma prison (aka Kubuntu).
Note that at the moment I’m not even getting a DM (no KDM, GDM, SDDM, etc.) whereas when I still had my encrypted /home partition I was able to get the Netrunner rolling DM. Now I get only a console prompt.
Thanks in advance for any further insight or suggestions.
With the twin cards your best bet would be to start the Live media using the non-free option (Nvidia Proprietary Drivers).
Note: this may take a bit longer to boot up since MHWD will need to install and load the correct version of the nvidia driver for your twin nVidia video cards. Also make sure you disable secure boot if your using UEFI.
Yup, way ahead of you. I’ve only been starting up the live media with the non-free option. And I disabled Secure Boot quite awhile ago when I first installed Kubuntu on my system. And I’ve installed Rolling this way – with the result I have now.
I would not think disk partition layout factors at all in my system’s apparent inability to install/configure KDE, but just in case: I’ve got a non-trivial disk setup, and I’m using the manual partition option. This lets me set up my /, /home and /var partitions on my 3rd & 4th disks (1st & 2nd being devoted to Windows 10). Also, I’ve got my GRUB set up on my 2nd drive, where it can mediate between Windows 10 & Netrunner.
Anything else I can look at? Thanks again.
OK, in that case could you try booting it using the free drivers and let me know the results?
OK, after a number of consecutive attempts to install using the free drivers (with various GRUB-related failures) I’ve managed to get to a working DM, have logged in successfully and even (gasp) gotten the expected desktop. Huzzah! Now I merely need to install nVidia drivers & enable dual-monitor. I’m assuming this should be straightforward. AJSlye, thanks for the help.
Yes, under system settings we have integrated msm (Manjaro Settings Manager), in this there is a hardware detection utility that can be used to install the non-free drivers for video and sometimes networking.
If you run into any issues at all, please use the Manjaro wiki’s Nvidia setup page:
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Configure_NVIDIA_(non-free)_settings_and_load_them_on_Startup
Wiki main page:
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
Ugh, this is frustrating beyond belief. Even after getting a desktop I’m not able to upgrade via pacman without endless complaints about conflicting packages or dependencies. A starting system should not have upgrade issues like this. I realize the upgrade path from KDE4 to KDE5 is littered with gotchas but from what I’ve seen in your forum post about the subject it shouldn’t be encountering breaking errors throughout. I’ve downloaded, burned & installed from the latest Rolling ISO – and I’m still not able to just upgrade the system without having to first toss old versions of software. And even then I’m getting complaints about conflicting packages that break the upgrade. In addition I’m getting unreliable results when I try to reinstall – the exact same installation setup seems to produce only a console login prompt (minus DM/desktop) more times than not. Is there something I’m missing here? I’d love to be able to use this distro but the result is undermining my trust in it.
Back at the console-only login; in response to “sudo pacman -Syyu” I’m getting “error: unresolvable package conflicts detected” due to conflicting dependencies, because “akonadi-qt4 and akonadi are in conflict”. This is where I’ve been even when I’m able to get the desktop up & running. Is this because the current state of Rolling is between KDE4 & KDE5? Thanks again for any insight and/or suggestions.
OK, at these types of prompts you typically need to type Y(es) to allow the conflicting packages to be removed. These error’s usually happen when either a package has been renamed, combined into another package, or is no longer needed by the parent application. In this instance there were some parts on the Akonadi PIM suite (Formally KDE PIM) that we’re still using QT4, since all of the PIM suite is now ported to QT5, the akonadi-qt4 package is no longer needed.
OK, good to know. I have actually answered “Yes” to each of those and continued to get impassable conflict errors that borked upgrade.
Just for some perspective I swam upstream to Manjaro and gave its install procedure a spin. One item I found interesting: it autoidentified & mounted a 5TB external drive for me, and helpfully offered its partitions for potential installation candidates, even when I had explicitly unmounted it.
This gave me an idea – keep that external drive unmounted, flip back to Netrunner Rolling (booted w/ free drivers), run the installation with the same settings I’ve been using and I’m back at a desktop. Taking a break now but my plan is to follow the instructions you provided for enabling nVidia drivers & dual monitor support, then run a full system upgrade. (ISTR that keeping external drives attached during Linux installs has caused me some grief in the past.)
Incidentally, I’m pretty impressed with Manjaro & can see why you built a Netrunner atop it. It’s way faster than Kubuntu, on the order of seconds vs. a minute thirty plus to get to the DM. And everything on the desktop proper screams into action.
I’ll advise if I have further issues but only after I give your clear instructions a go. Thanks again! 
OK, after following a number of blind alleys I think I’m starting to get a handle on the upgrade process. I’ve synthesized my own upgrade process from a few forum posts (notably http://forums.netrunner.com/showthread.php?tid=17358) and a more careful reading of /etc/pacman.conf while I was editing it to remove the blueshell repo. So starting from a fresh install with non-free drivers (which works great if you make sure your intended /home folder doesn’t contain a .kde folder – allowing the installer to set up its own – and also ensuring all removeable drives are physically unattached) I started off with nVidia drivers & dual monitor working fine.
Next, I did the following:
pacman-key --init
pacman-key --populate archlinux manjaro
pacman -Syy pacman manjaro-system
I purposely did not remove the duplicate bash folder because somewhere you had mentioned that step is no longer relevant. At any rate I’m now getting the following failures:
[code][bug@###### ~]$ sudo pacman -Syy pacman manjaro-system
:: Synchronizing package databases…
core 135.1 KiB 595K/s 00:00 [##################################################################################################] 100%
extra 1942.1 KiB 2.03M/s 00:01 [##################################################################################################] 100%
community 3.3 MiB 6.03M/s 00:01 [##################################################################################################] 100%
multilib 173.2 KiB 5.64M/s 00:00 [##################################################################################################] 100%
error: duplicated database entry ‘bash’
warning: pacman-4.2.1-4 is up to date – reinstalling
warning: manjaro-system-20151026-1 is up to date – reinstalling
resolving dependencies…
looking for conflicting packages…
Packages (2) manjaro-system-20151026-1 pacman-4.2.1-4
Total Installed Size: 4.38 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.00 MiB
:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
(2/2) checking keys in keyring [##################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking package integrity [##################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) loading package files [##################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking for file conflicts [##################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking available disk space [##################################################################################################] 100%
(1/2) reinstalling pacman [##################################################################################################] 100%
(2/2) reinstalling manjaro-system [##################################################################################################] 100%
==> Updating mhwd database
error: duplicated database entry ‘bash’
resolving dependencies…
looking for conflicting packages…
:: mhwd-nvidia-304xx and mhwd-nvidia-legacy are in conflict. Remove mhwd-nvidia-legacy? [y/N] error: unresolvable package conflicts detected
error: failed to prepare transaction (conflicting dependencies)
:: mhwd-nvidia-304xx and mhwd-nvidia-legacy are in conflict
error: duplicated database entry ‘bash’
/tmp/alpm_vpMelF/.INSTALL: line 299: [: duplicated
4391: integer expression expected
/tmp/alpm_vpMelF/.INSTALL: line 311: [: duplicated
3161: integer expression expected
/tmp/alpm_vpMelF/.INSTALL: line 380: [: duplicated
1203: integer expression expected
/tmp/alpm_vpMelF/.INSTALL: line 419: [: duplicated
3122: integer expression expected
error: duplicated database entry ‘bash’
warning: lock file missing /var/lib/pacman/db.lck
[bug@###### ~]$
[/code]
(In case it wasn’t self-evident this was in response to my second attempt to run that command. I can provide the output from the first run if needed.)
Questions at this point:
-
Is it necessary to “rm -R /var/lib/pacman/local/bash-4.3.024-1” ?
-
How do I best resolve the conflict between mhwd-nvidia-304xx & mhwd-nvidia-legacy?
-
After 1 & 2, do I continue following your instructions after “pacman -Syy pacman manjaro-system” (from http://forums.netrunner.com/showthread.php?tid=17358), that is “pacman -S archlinux-keyring manjaro-keyring” etc. ? Or is there a more current guide I should follow?
Thanks again for any insight or direction you can provide, and advise if you require further information.
That update procedure was for the 2014.09 ISO not 2015.09 one, you shouldn’t need to follow it as a guide any longer.
After a fresh install of 2015.09 only sudo pacman -Syyu should have been needed.
I’ll update that thread so no one else makes the same mistake.
Also, since this is a fresh install you shouldn’t even have a /var/lib/pacman/local/bash-4.3.024-1 folder, nor should there be a conflict with mhwd-nvidia-legacy since it’s hasn’t existed for a while now, this all seems a bit odd.
Did you not format the / partition when installing? Perhaps because your home directory was on the same partition?
If so then yes, you’ll need to delete everything on the drive excluding your home folder before performing a fresh install otherwise the existing files will cause all kinds of conficts.Alternatively, you may want to think about having a separate partition for /home.
Way ahead of you. I have separate partitions for /home, /var and /. And yes, I formatted my / partition on install – I’ve found that’s safest, and I have backups for the stuff I need (mostly /etc/ files for Apache2 configs).
I was also under the impression that “sudo pacman -Syyu” should have been sufficient. Is there anything else – the contents of one or more files, for example – that would help you figure this out? Is it possible that the 2015.09 Rolling DVD is out of date? (I D/L’ed it using BitTorrent, which should include the md5 hash check as part of the download process, so I assumed the image I burned was tip-top.)
Thanks again.
_Is it possible that the 2015.09 Rolling DVD is out of date?
I don’t know if it’s the same problem : after the instalation , using Calamares , the system was completely out-of-date ; it was necessary more then 400 updates , almost one-by-one , and after some of them gave an error ; so , I installed Manjaro , using Calamares , and results the same problem - but I made a new instalation using Thus ( Manjaro gives this option ) and everything works fine .
But I would Netrunner , so I installed the 14 again . Is the problem is at Calamares ?
Yes and NO, Calamares is a new product and is not without some issues and missing features. Also, since NRR is based on Manjaro you have the option of downloading and using both the CLI installer and/or Thus from the Manjaro repositories.
We at the Manjaro and Arch camps are pushing out updates like crazy, on the Manjaro side this has been weekly for the Stable branch, hence all the updates. On the Arch Stable and Manjaro unstable sides, this is and always will be daily. Trying keep up with and fix the bugs and/or breakages that comes with major updates, like plasma5, KF5, the KDE Applications, and gtk/gnome 3.18.
OK I got off topic, yes because of the increased speed of pushing out stable updates, the number of packages after a fresh install has increased significantly. This however should not be breaking any ones system using pacman -Syu and selecting yes to any packages that are being replaced on a fresh install.
So I can use Thus to install Netrunner ? Please , how can I do ?
The option to choose Thus at Manjaro is more “explicit” (he, he) .
You can just connect to the internet when in live mode and install these with pacman.
These are not officially supported but they should work.
Any thoughts on why my attempts to upgrade should consistently encounter any breakages, given that my / & /var partitions were formatted when I installed? (BTW, this is reproducible, I can reinstall – and have reinstalled numerous times – using the same NRR DVD and it’s consistently not able to upgrade using just the commands you’ve described.) I’m assuming my DVD is 2015.09; I’ve checked “cat /etc/issue” but all it says is “Netrunner Rolling”.