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Repo mix-and-match hit parade

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spacex
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#41 Post by spacex »

GarryRicketson wrote:I wonder if the people that mix repos, and distros, try to do the same with their cars,
For example, try to put the transmission, that was in the Ford, the kid crashed, and now the newer Chevy has problems with the transmission, so "Let's take the old ford transmission, and weld it to the Chevy, (needs to be welded, because the mounting holes, bolts don't match),....
Sure there are. There are people doing all kinds of custom mods, regardless if it's cars or computers. Life should be fun. It's to short to be playing everything safe. The more unlikely a mod is, the greater achievement it is to make it work. After all, most of us are gonna leave this planet in 20-30 years. Why not make them count. Instead of just being and playing everything safe. Want to try something? Then just do it. Doesn't matter if everyone else thinks it's insane. doesn't even matter if you succeed or fail. The only importance is that you have fun while doing it :D

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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#42 Post by Bulkley »

spacex wrote:Life should be fun. It's to short to be playing everything safe. The more unlikely a mod is, the greater achievement it is to make it work. After all, most of us are gonna leave this planet in 20-30 years. Why not make them count. Instead of just being and playing everything safe. Want to try something? Then just do it. Doesn't matter if everyone else thinks it's insane. doesn't even matter if you succeed or fail. The only importance is that you have fun while doing it
Yes, but it doesn't do any favours to newbies to tell them that.

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GarryRicketson
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#43 Post by GarryRicketson »

Well at least it is not "life threatening", unless it happened to be a computer controlling some kind of "life support system" in the critical care section at the hospital.
Yes, but it doesn't do any favors to newbies to tell them that.
The first thing a "newbie" needs to understand, is what the consequences of mixing repos may be, and also some things that just plain don't work, this is especially important when perhaps a student, and all his/her school work is on the one system, on the only laptop they have, or also a small business, or "production server". Until the "newbie" or less experienced person, regardless if it is a student, or professional, business, until or unless the individual expresses the desire to experiment and try some modification, etc. then it is fine, to encourage them, it is a great learning experience to try new things, but they need to understand that should also be done on a seperate machine, (ideally) or at least partition, or a VM, and not the OS they depend on.
For example, also, telling people they should not mention which distro they are using because this is a Debian forum, and they might not get a response, or might get told to ask some where else, that kind of advice could lead to creating a "mixed" system, in reverse, getting stuff from the Debian repository, when they should have been using the
repository for that particular distro. Like wise , downloading what often is just "linux" software, from unknown sources, there is a lot of "linux" software out there, and it is obvious the developer does not really know enough about "linux" and all of the distros to take that into consideration, maybe they just test it on "ubuntu" , and then say, ok , This works on linux, but they have no clue if it really works , on Debian, or any of the other distros.
I am sure most people here have noticed, but if not, take a look at the install manuals , on some of the better "open source" software, and they will see that the install manual includes different instructions, specific for Debian, or Arch, Ubuntu, and some of the other most popular distros, and the instructions are different,..very important to read the "read me first", etc.

Some times, I have found in the "read me" file, it says, "If you are using Debian you need to, bla, bla,(usually a url and reference that you need to be sure to get the libraries needed from the Debian repository).Or in some case I have seen where they admit,and make it clear, that that particular package, has had problem working on Debian.

I know, because I learned the "hard way", installing a "control panel" ,or trying too, for a server. I thought I followed the instructions carefully, well I did follow them carefully, but after the install, it (the program) would not run, it was late and I was tired,..my second "fatal error", I shut the server and computer down, went to bed.
The next day when I started the computer,.. could not boot, to the partition that had the server. So I booted with a different partition, and went to the site where the manual, and install instructions were, to see if I could figure out what had gone wrong. When I started reading, carefully again,.. I noticed it said " for archlinux", and further down,"for Debian "squeeze", for "Lenny" see this: (a url link for debian "lenny"), and further down,
"For Ubuntu", etc,various distros.
Well, the night before I had not payed attention, and had started following the instructions on the first part I saw, so I guess that was "Archlinux",..this was so long ago, don't remember exact details, ..but any way, I compared some parts of the instructions, with the instructions for Debian, and they were different, ... especially different on the sources that I was supposed to use, to install certain libraries, (dependencies), that did not come in the software package and needed to be installed first. I was lucky, and was able uninstall, purge, etc,..and got back to where the "Squeeze", partition would boot , and was able to successfully install the software.
Kind of a Too Long of A Post, maybe not very many will read it, my feelings though, ok, if that is what one enjoys, experimenting and crashing a system just to see if they can fix it, go for Have Fun !, But well, maybe it is cause I am older and wiser now, Life is to short to waste parts of it trying to do something that is impossible, or extra hours, re-installing and starting over, I would rather be doing other things, then running in circles, waste valuable time.

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dasein
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#44 Post by dasein »

Bulkley wrote:
spacex wrote:Life should be fun. It's to short to be playing everything safe. The more unlikely a mod is, the greater achievement it is to make it work. After all, most of us are gonna leave this planet in 20-30 years. Why not make them count. Instead of just being and playing everything safe. Want to try something? Then just do it. Doesn't matter if everyone else thinks it's insane. doesn't even matter if you succeed or fail. The only importance is that you have fun while doing it
Yes, but it doesn't do any favours to newbies to tell them that.
More to the point, not a single person posting problems related to repo mixing so much as hinted that s/he was trying to break his/her system in order to experience the "joy" of fixing it.

Not one of them said anything like, "I was hoping to spend a few hours learning all about how to fix entirely optional and unnecessary breakage, but it's turning out to be a bit tougher than I imagined it would be."

Not one of them said anything like, "Yeah, I was trying to master subtleties of apt-pinning and hosed my system because of a stupid typo. Can this be fixed?"

Not one of them said anything like, "I was looking for an excuse to reinstall my system, and this seemed like a really effective method."

No. The reports are from people who borked their systems out of ignorance, and who exhibit absolutely zero interest in "learning" anything. At the risk of pointing out the blindingly obvious, that's why they are asking others to give them a "canned" fix, rather than doing independent research.

The "'joy' of breakage" is merely a strawman. At best, it's pure psychological projection; at worst, it's an attempt to rationalize psychopathy.
Last edited by dasein on 2015-10-27 16:56, edited 1 time in total.

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GarryRicketson
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#45 Post by GarryRicketson »

More to the point, not a single person posting problems related to repo mixing so much as hinted that s/he was trying to break his/her system in order to experience the "joy" of fixing it.
and
No. The reports are from people who borked their systems out of ignorance, and who exhibit absolutely zero interest in "learning" anything.
Well, not all of the "exhibit absolutely zero interest in "learning" anything" , there are a few that, admit, it was "ignorance", or "lack of experience", and sometimes mis-information, but were also happy to have been pointed to the "don't break Debian", link, and maybe did learn something.
For me, (none of my oldest posts are here, fortunately), but still applies to me, as well, when I first joined the forum , I had a problem, My Debian was "broken" , and I did not understand why, I noticed the link to "don't break Debian", in the signature of H_O_A_S, looked at it, and realized that was probably what was wrong, a program I had gotten , back when I was using Xubuntu, was not in the Debian repos, so I thought I was real smart,...ok well I didn't use the Xubuntu repos, but I did add a source, link to the "download", location for the software, and that worked, it installed just fine,...but it also broke my system,..after reading the "how to not break Debian",https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
I looked into it more, and found out the "program" that caused the problem, had been deliberately, removed from the Debian repos, for that very reason, it had some "bugs" that would break the system. All of the trouble could have been avoided, if I had done a little research first,..now I do check things out ahead of time.
It is true, most , if not all of the ones in this thread, were genuinely surprised when they found that they had broken their system, none of them were trying too experiment, or expected the problems, mostly because these were things they did not know.
It is a "valuable" topic/thread, for various reasons, the main one, it has links to all or most of the threads that were problems caused by mixing repos, and incorrect sources.list files, when there are posts that this is the problem, referring them to this topic/thread, they can find where in some cases , the person was able to restore the system, and how they did it, as well as the many, where re-installing was the easiest thing to do.

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edbarx
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#46 Post by edbarx »

The major problem with repository mixing is new users assume for no logical reason that all distributions must compile their packages in a way that guarantees package compatibility. They also have no idea what an operating system really is, as for most of them, an operating system, must be something like MS Windows.

Operating systems may take many forms, and this is where beginners often fail to realise, that their idea of an operating system, is badly limited.
Debian == { > 30, 000 packages }; Debian != systemd
The worst infection of all, is a false sense of security!
It is hard to get away from CLI tools.

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thanatos_incarnate
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#47 Post by thanatos_incarnate »

edbarx wrote:as for most of them, an operating system, must be something like MS Windows.
Which is hypocritical if you think about it. I dare every Windows fanboy to stick the win*.dll file of Windows 10
into Windows XP and reboot. Sounds crazy, OK, but that's the analogy of what a lot of people literally do here.
Or I dare people to use their old Vista drivers on Windows 10 and see how it works.

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dasein
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#48 Post by dasein »

GarryRicketson wrote: It is true, most , if not all of the ones in this thread, were genuinely surprised when they found that they had broken their system, none of them were trying too experiment, or expected the problems, mostly because these were things they did not know.
That's exactly my point. It is irresponsible for anyone to encourage folks to engage in potentially destructive behavior "for the lulz" when the only one getting any lulz out of the deal is the instigator.

After all, mumblety-peg "isn't dangerous" if you are an accomplished knife thrower. But that doesn't justify encouraging random people to try it so that they can "learn" all about staunching arterial blood flow, or experience the "fun" of reattachment surgery.

spacex
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#49 Post by spacex »

dasein wrote: The "'joy' of breakage" is merely a strawman. At best, it's pure psychological projection; at worst, it's an attempt to rationalize psychopathy.
Yes, if breakage was something that happened to us often. But it isn't. The same mistakes are never made twice :)

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GarryRicketson
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#50 Post by GarryRicketson »

Seems like a "harmless problem"

Packages install endlessly?


How long will it keep running ?

Wheelerof4te
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#51 Post by Wheelerof4te »

^I give it a day or two.

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dasein
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#52 Post by dasein »

I dunno. This one looks harmless enough as presented (duplicate sources). Of course, the deeper concern is what damage might have been done in a prior dist-upgrade. I have no freaking clue what tangalou is (nor do I care, just for the record). Might be a trainwreck, might be nothing.

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GarryRicketson
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#53 Post by GarryRicketson »

by dasein »I have no freaking clue what tangalou is (nor do I care, just for the record).
Ok, well just in case some one else wants to know,..It seems to be quite the "mix",
using a little from "experimental" and a little from "testing", interesting experiment, I suppose, but not something any body that needs a reliable system would want to use.
From http://tanglu.org/faq/:
Is Tanglu 1.0 based on Debian Testing or Unstable?

It's neither. While the majority of packages comes from Testing, a significantly large amount is taken from Unstable. A few packages even trace back to Debian Experimental. When building this release we tried to get the technically best constellation of packages, including newer versions where it made sense. Using the versions from Testing as primary choice has the advantage that these versions already received some testing in Debian before they landed in Tanglu.
I like this "already received some testing in Debian", glad to know they did "some" testing, but what happens when the user is using a computer that it has not been tested on, ? Or what happens when some of the "experimental" packages turn out to have "bugs" ? I imagine lots of updating, repairs, unexpected problems to be solved, are all part of the "bargain"

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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#54 Post by keithpeter »

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 ... 00157.html

This one looks quite impressive. The mail list contributors were restrained in their replies.

ant
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#55 Post by ant »

Yikes. I fell for this too. I think I need to do a clean install to get to Jessie since my oldstable Wheezy is sort of a mess with Debian Multimedia, VirtualBox.org's deb files, Google, and others. I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those? :(

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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#56 Post by steve_v »

ant wrote:I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those? :(
Except for a couple of special cases, I resist the "new stuff". :P
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. Four times is Official GNOME Policy.

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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#57 Post by dasein »

Unfortunately, the ignore list doesn't work on quoted text...
ant wrote:I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those? :(
Debian is the worst possible choice for anyone who wants shiny-shiny. Run Arch and be done with it.

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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#58 Post by stevepusser »

ant wrote:Yikes. I fell for this too. I think I need to do a clean install to get to Jessie since my oldstable Wheezy is sort of a mess with Debian Multimedia, VirtualBox.org's deb files, Google, and others. I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those? :(
Third party repositories can be be perfectly compatible if the maintainer of the packages takes care to keep them so. However, there's no Debian police squad to take them downtown if they mess up. Most of those repos you have mentioned have proven safe when used by other users as directed. Best thing is to ask experienced users here if they've used those repos.

Some of deb-multimedia's (DMO) packages are infamous for breaking other of Debian's multimedia programs. Usually this is due to one of DMO's packages pulling in the dmo version of the "real" ffmpeg libraries over Jessie's libav versions of those.
MX Linux packager and developer

ant
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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#59 Post by ant »

stevepusser wrote:
ant wrote:Yikes. I fell for this too. I think I need to do a clean install to get to Jessie since my oldstable Wheezy is sort of a mess with Debian Multimedia, VirtualBox.org's deb files, Google, and others. I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those? :(
Third party repositories can be be perfectly compatible if the maintainer of the packages takes care to keep them so. However, there's no Debian police squad to take them downtown if they mess up. Most of those repos you have mentioned have proven safe when used by other users as directed. Best thing is to ask experienced users here if they've used those repos.

Some of deb-multimedia's (DMO) packages are infamous for breaking other of Debian's multimedia programs. Usually this is due to one of DMO's packages pulling in the dmo version of the "real" ffmpeg libraries over Jessie's libav versions of those.
So, only Debian Multimedia is the worse?

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Re: Repo mix-and-match hit parade

#60 Post by ant »

dasein wrote:Unfortunately, the ignore list doesn't work on quoted text...
ant wrote:I want to get the new stuff from outside of Debian's official servers too. How do you guys deal with those? :(
Debian is the worst possible choice for anyone who wants shiny-shiny. Run Arch and be done with it.
Even with unstable and testing (thinking of going to one of these if I do a clean install)? Forget experimental. ;)

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