[GNOME] Public Service Announcement for Fedora users upgrading using fedup

Consider updating fedup to 0.8.0 from updates-testing



# yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing fedup



Or else you may end up with a broken System Upgrade.



https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1044346

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1044086

[Technology] Another disappointing upgrade experience

So, sometimes, I'm actually pleased with Fedora upgrades.  Not recently though.  With Fedora 20, I again run into a crippling, opaque problem, which ultimately isn't a huge barrier for me, but I can imagine my friends being lost.



This time, at the time of its release, an appropriate version of fedup (the official upgrade tool) is not available in the Fedora 19 repositories.  You want 0.8, but instead you'll use 0.7, and after downloading a ton of packages, you'll go to restart and then it will fail to upgrade, complaining about things like

-- Unit boot-efi.mount has begun starting up.
            Dec 18 03:14:13 symonia.localdomain mount[768]: mount: unknown filesystem type 'vfat'
            Dec 18 03:14:13 symonia.localdomain systemd[1]: boot-efi.mount mount process exited, code=exited status=32
            Dec 18 03:14:13 symonia.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to mount /boot/efi.
            -- Subject: Unit boot-efi.mount has failed
            -- Defined-By: systemd
            -- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
            -- 
            -- Unit boot-efi.mount has failed.
            -- 
            -- The result is failed.
            Dec 18 03:14:13 symonia.localdomain systemd[1]: Dependency failed for Local File Systems.
            -- Subject: Unit local-fs.target has failed
            -- Defined-By: systemd
            -- Support: http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
            -- 
            -- Unit local-fs.target has failed.
            -- 
            -- The result is dependency.

I mean, if you can even find that in the voluminous journal output once you're on the command-line.



The solution is to update to the version of fedup in the updates-testing repo



# yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing fedup



Then re-run fedup.  However, if you tried with 0.7 first, 0.8 wants to download the packages in a new directory configuration, so you'll end up with 1.5GB of duplicate packages on your system O_O.  So, I hardlinked the ones in the 0.7 directory (/var/lib/fedora_upgrade) into the various repo-specific directories from 0.8 (/var/tmp/system_upgrade/SOMEREPO/packages).  Those directories might not be quite right, as having eventually succeeded in upgrading, the latter one is gone (the former is still around, wasting space, of course).



Why would the current version of fedup at the time of release be non-functioning, when it's the recommended tool for upgrades?  Yeesh.



The relevant bug is here:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1044346

[Technology] Fedora 20's System Upgrade with FedUp fails to boot :(

I bet it's because my file system is encrypted.  Sigh.  That used to work.  Silly Linux.

[Technology] Netflix on Fedora, working thanks to Pipelight

I had previously tried to get Netflix to work on Fedora through recompiling wine with associated patches.  It never quite worked (segfaults).  However, thanks to Pipelight, I can now install it relatively easily on Fedora.  Pay attention to all the steps, but it works!

[Technology] Android phone; remote locate, ring, lock and wipe

I remember reading that Android could now locate, ring, lock, and/or wipe lost phones using the Android Device Manager but I never tried it (or enabled the remote lock or remote wipe) until today. Triangulating my position via my cell service isn't very useful or accurate (in part due to WIND's relatively few towers, I presume) but when wifi or GPS is one, it works well. I wish I could remotely activate those, too, to get a finer lock. Sadly, nothing so exciting as losing my phone tends to happen. :'(

[Microblog] Hour of Code

US President Barack Obama wants young Americans to learn how to code. Non-Americans could probably benefit too.

[Technology] 12 Days of WaitingforFedora20

Fedora 20 is coming!  With GNOME 3.10!   On the 17th!



A friend recently had issues trying to reinstall Ubuntu a few times and has agreed to give Fedora a try.  I haven't used Ubuntu regularly in a while, but I don't have much inclination too given my affection for GNOME Shell.  I'm curious why a friend recently told me they switched from Fedora to Ubuntu and that perhaps I should be able to guess why, but I'm not sure what they were suggesting in the end?  Ah well.  To the future, where everything is GNOME!