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[Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

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[Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#1 Post by ooglaboogla »

Forgive me for accessing this board using windows 10 (eww), but updates today broke Debian Cinnamon on 2 of my PCs and a laptop. Exact same problem on all 3, and all 3 have completely different hardware. All 3 are running the new Kernel 5.14 release from the Sid repo, and Cinnamon 5.05 from the Experimental repo. I've been running Cinnamon 5.05 for a while, and the 5.14 Kernel didn't do this. I've been running it on one of the PCs for 2 days. I update my main machine every day or two. The secondary about twice a week. And the laptop about once a week. I updated all of them this evening in the terminal using the sudo apt upgrade command, which is what I usually do. (Sometimes I use Synaptic.) After restarting, all 3 of them fail to load the Cinnamon Desktop and are in fallback mode. All I can get is the desktop background and desktop icons. I had to right click on the desktop, open a terminal, and use the sudo shutdown command to shut them down properly. I can still check for updates in the terminal, but all packages are up to date. Anybody seen this? Anybody know how I can fix it in the terminal? I'm not a newbie, but I'm not a heavy terminal user, either. I hope future updates will just fix this. I really can't stand windows 10. LOL. I have other Linuxes multi-booting on the secondary PC, but I love my Rolling Debian. For now, I may open the terminal and install XFCE on one of them. Any help is appreciated.
Last edited by ooglaboogla on 2021-09-29 23:44, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#2 Post by sunrat »

Sid and experimental are not called development releases for nothing. Packages are in experimental because they haven't been proven to work yet. 5.14 was released in Sid yesterday so also not proven.
You need to check journalctl, logs in /var/log/ , ~/.xsessionerrors. It may help to post your hardware details, inxi -Fxz is best so install inxi.
If you use Nvidia non-free driver it is also likely to not work for a brand new point release kernel in Sid. So many variables.
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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#3 Post by 4D696B65 »

ooglaboogla wrote: 2021-09-25 00:35 updates today broke Debian Cinnamon on 2 of my PCs and a laptop. Exact same problem on all 3
So you broke one box then decided to do it two more times. Albert Einstein had something to say about this. :lol:
Best you can do is keep updating and hope for a fix. Consider yourself lucky that you can get to a terminal.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#4 Post by ooglaboogla »

No, I didn't break one box and do it 2 more times. I was updating all 3 at the same time. Simple to reinstall, but I'd rather it be fixed without having to do that. By the way, nvidia had nothing to do with this. None of them are running nvidia graphics. 2 are legacy ATI/AMD and the laptop is Intel, but thanks for asking. If you have something helpful to post, go ahead. If you just want to be an ass, keep it to yourself. (That's in response to the Albert Einstein remark.)
Last edited by ooglaboogla on 2021-09-25 16:20, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#5 Post by Hallvor »

Check your logs. Apt listbugs is also useful, so you may be warned of troublesome upgrades. Hopefully a new upgrade will fix your problems.

Breakage is to be expected in the development branch.
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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#6 Post by ooglaboogla »

Always known that breakage is expected in Debian Testing/Unstable/Experimental, but have never really had it happen over the year or so I've been using it. Had a few issues for a week or so with VirtualBox during the Python3 transition, but future updates from Sid corrected those issues. I know right now is a transitional time for Bookworm/Sid, so it doesn't surprise me. I had been using Cinnamon 5 for months on other distros, and started using it on Debian right after it was added to the Experimental repo. To update the situation, I wasn't able to get Cinnamon 5.05 to work again. Working from Synaptic in XFCE, I was able to remove all packages directly related to Cinnamon 5, including lib files. After getting that done and restarting, I was able to reinstall Cinnamon 4.8.6 from Sid. In other words, I didn't force the Experimental repo version 5.05 this time. That worked and Cinnamon is working again. I don't like older versions of Cinnamon, but 4.8.6 is fine. I worked around the problem, but I don't consider it solved. I'd like to see Cinnamon 5 working again on Debian soon.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#7 Post by wizard10000 »

ooglaboogla wrote: 2021-09-25 15:06...Had a few issues for a week or so with VirtualBox during the Python3 transition
Allow me to share something about metapackages, Sid and upgrades that isn't published anywhere - or at least I don't think it is :mrgreen:

Sid repos update every six hours and get partial uploads when big updates are happening. The one time I broke Sid badly enough to justify a reinstall was causing serious xorg breakage with an apt update before all the packages had been uploaded to Sid. Anyway, here's the thing to remember about metapackages and upgrades -

I'm pretty sure the *last* package in a metapackage to be uploaded is the metapackage itself. So if you see a bunch of xorg or python or DE changes but you don't see the metapackage it ain't done uploading yet :)

Debian dev mailing lists are also a good source for learning what's coming down the pipe.
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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#8 Post by ooglaboogla »

Good information.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#9 Post by ooglaboogla »

More info: The laptop got 30 updates today around noon Eastern Time, but did not change anything. I'm in the process of removing Cinnamon 5.05 from it as well, so I can install 4.8.6. Booting to Kernel 5.10 on it made no difference, either.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#10 Post by ooglaboogla »

Another update: Performing the same procedures on the laptop to be able to install Cinnamon 4.8.6 instead of 5.05 worked as expected, so it is working again. I'm not going to do the same with the secondary PC yet, because I'd like to see if updates eventually fix the issue. That PC has Mint 20.2 Cinnamon and Zorin 16 Cinnamon on it as well, so it doesn't matter that I can't boot it to Debian. I had mentioned before that I'm not a strong terminal user. I'm more into finding ways to do everything I need to do in the GUI. That's one reason I like Cinnamon, because it makes that easier in some ways. To get Cinnamon 4.8.6 on my main PC and laptop, I first opened the terminal from the right-click menu on the malfunctioning Cinnamon desktop and ran sudo apt install xfce4, so I could use XFCE as a rescue GUI. I then opened Computer on the desktop and browsed to /etc/lightdm and opened the folder as root in Nemo. I then used text editor to edit the lightdm.conf file to disable autologin, by commenting out line 127 in my file. (May be different for others, but should be close to 127. If you don't use autologin, this isn't necessary.) I then opened a terminal on the desktop again and used the command sudo reboot to get to the lightdm login screen. There I changed the session to XFCE and logged in. From there I opened Synaptic and searched "Cinnamon." In the results, I first uninstalled the main package "cinnamon." I then opened a terminal and used the sudo apt autoremove command. This removed much of the Cinnamon 5.05 packages, but still left a number of them. Cinnamon 4.8.6 will not install without removing the rest. I had to restart and open Synaptic again to remove them without getting a broken packages message. I removed all the rest manually, mostly lib files. After doing this, Synaptic shows Cinnamon not installed at all and version 4.8.6 available. After installing the main Cinnamon package and rebooting, then choosing Cinnamon session in lightdm, it works fine again. Just had to enable my autologin again by editing the lightdm.conf file. I'm sure there's an easier way to accomplish this just using a terminal. If anyone wishes to share it, be my guest. Myself, I actually like having XFCE as a backup environment anyway. Also, in the 20 years or so that I had played with Linux before completely switching to it a couple of years ago, I always thought that it was important for Linux to become more user-friendly, and for it to be possible to do everything you need to do in the GUI. Linux finally reached that point over the last few years, which is why I completely switched.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#11 Post by arid »

I'm still lovin' it :mrgreen:

https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?P ... g67649#new

That's how long a thread needs to be to solve a problem.
There's no drama in my sid......

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#12 Post by ooglaboogla »

If you're suggesting that this Siduction post is my problem, thanks for the link, but I already have version 1.70.0-2 of libgirepository. BTW, Siduction is cool. I use it as well. Update for 9-27 is that this issue still hasn't been fixed on Debian's servers. I had one more PC running the same setup, with once again completely different hardware from these other 3. I had waited until today to update it. It did the same thing after restarting. I corrected it by once again installing XFCE to work from and removing Cinnamon 5. I did streamline the process a little. I searched Cinnamon in Synaptic. There were 27 packages in the results which were installed and showed version 5. I selected all of them and removed them. This went without a hitch. I then refreshed by clicking the Reload button, then selected the single package Cinnamon to install. 29 other packages were automatically selected with it. The install went perfectly, without rebooting, or even closing Synaptic. I then logged out of XFCE and back into Cinnamon 4.8.6. Guess I just won't plan on using Cinnamon 5 on Debian, at least for a while. If anybody else besides me is crazy enough to try to run Debian Experimental Cinnamon, I hope this information is beneficial.

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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#13 Post by cds60601 »

I feel your pain so I thought I might let you know what I do.
I more or less run Sid also. What I mean, right after a stable release, there seems to be far more breakage than say if someone moved to Sid mid-cycle (meaning, about 1/2 way though to the next stable release).
With that, I tend to stick with Testing for about the first year after a stable release, then bump to Sid.
Since implementing this process, I have never had issues after the fact. It may not be the advisable or best way to go, but this works for me YMMV.
Good luck in your endeavors.
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Re: Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#14 Post by ooglaboogla »

I stay with Sid and roll with the breakage. LOL. Final update: Sid actually fixed this problem today, so I will consider it solved. Today when checking for updates, Cinnamon 5 was available from Sid, so you no longer have to force the update from Experimental. I considered whether or not to Lock version 4.8.6.2 instead of updating, but figured I would go ahead and try. It appears the Debian team fixed whatever was messed up. After upgrading back to Cinnamon 5.05, it works again. I figured they would get it straightened out soon enough. Thanks, Debian team. Rolling Debian Rules!

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Re: [Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#15 Post by mrjcd »

updates his morning broke my Intel i5-3750 (OptiPlex 7010)
was doing great running k5.14.0-1 for day or so but whatever updates killed it today
looked real good getting/doing updates and also after type 'reboot' all looked okydoky
looked real fine all thru restart until it attempted to go to Gnome login screen --- that's when it just gave me the 'SAD' face and said may have to contact administrator .. "Ha" I done same a few times and then just 'dd' a good BU Bullseye to it and back to all good :-)
I'll play with 'testing/bookworm' on it again afterlater.
I'm using 'testing' on this machine I'm on now but I will NOT do any updates ....well maybe try for it tomorrow :-)

Code: Select all

mrjcd@OMG-Deb:~$ neofetch
       _,met$$$$$gg.          mrjcd@OMG-Deb 
    ,g$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$P.       ------------- 
  ,g$$P"     """Y$$.".        OS: Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid x86_64 
 ,$$P'              `$$$.     Host: CM1630 
',$$P       ,ggs.     `$$b:   Kernel: 5.14.0-1-amd64 
`d$$'     ,$P"'   .    $$$    Uptime: 29 mins 
 $$P      d$'     ,    $$P    Packages: 2074 (dpkg), 7 (flatpak) 
 $$:      $$.   -    ,d$$'    Shell: bash 5.1.8 
 $$;      Y$b._   _,d$P'      Resolution: 1366x768, 1440x900 
 Y$$.    `.`"Y$$$$P"'         DE: GNOME 3.38.6 
 `$$b      "-.__              WM: Mutter 
  `Y$$                        WM Theme: Adwaita 
   `Y$$.                      Theme: Adwaita [GTK2/3] 
     `$$b.                    Icons: gnome [GTK2/3] 
       `Y$$b.                 Terminal: gnome-terminal 
          `"Y$b._             CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 220 (2) @ 2.800GHz 
              `"""            GPU: AMD ATI Radeon 3000 
                              Memory: 1382MiB / 9643MiB 

                                                      


mrjcd@OMG-Deb:~$ date
Wed Sep 29 08:22:53 PM CDT 2021
mrjcd@OMG-Deb:~$

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Re: [Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#16 Post by argentwolf »

It's astounding that users get exasperated when interruption happens with their machines running an acknowledged unpredictable and evolving version of an OS, I'd think such disruption would be welcomed, hopeful, and expected as development (by the greatest team) is realized. I also believe those said users would gloat here as a strut to the movement as the next 'version' gradually materializes, and attest to the complete boorishness of the 'Stable'. I personally enjoy a gray area (stable) and especially don't appreciate the swing of black and white excitement on my system used to witness all the other chaos outside my tiny bubble...thanks in advance for the space to sound and your patients with my ignorance.
Last edited by argentwolf on 2021-09-30 15:07, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#17 Post by mrjcd »

just FYI -
I did updates today on the oldass ASUS machine I mentioned in my previous post and resulted in same:
Image
Booting in the k5.10 resulted in same.... some bad juju with DE

I set 'systemctl set-default multi-user.target'
and she booted just fine in tty & its USB/WiFi adaptor is all good so I'll update more in day or so.
Could have saved other machine same way but it is one I really need to use :-)

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Re: [Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#18 Post by argentwolf »

irony.jpeg
irony.jpeg (27.01 KiB) Viewed 5283 times
Nothing ventured, nothing gained...I'm laughing with you. :)
The movie 'Hunt For Red October" immediately comes to mind, "now you've telling me you've lost another sub?" Geez!
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Re: [Solved] Updates today (9-25-21) broke Debian Cinnamon

#19 Post by ooglaboogla »

Interesting stuff. Although I mentioned that the wonderful Debian team solved this particular issue, they seem to have created another one. On all of these machines, Cinnamon 5 will now work on Bookworm/Sid, but it doesn't want to stop. It logs out to LightDM fine, but on reboot or shutdown, Plymouth shows a message about running a stop job for Session # user *****, which waits for 90 seconds before giving up and ending the session. Doesn't happen with XFCE. Extremely annoying. Can't deal with that. Why in the world is that timeout 90 seconds, anyway? If something doesn't respond in 10 or 15 seconds, it's not going to. Anyway, the solution to this for now was to remove Cinnamon, remove Sid and Experimental, reinstall Cinnamon 4.8.6.2, and just use Debian Testing Bookworm. It still rolls a bit. Can't use Bullseye. I'm just too disappointed when I check for updates and get that "All packages are up to date" garbage. LOL.

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