mintUpdate 1.3 is out!

Post by **clem** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:48 pm

mintUpdate 1.3 comes with the following new features:

- Better thread strategy. Sometimes in version 1.2, threads would collide and crash mintUpdate so you would actually log in and mintUpdate would not show up. This is fixed in version 1.3.

- Logger. mintUpdate now logs most of what it does and which processes it uses. It even logs synaptic's return codes. This in itself doesn't add much to the tool but it will make troubleshooting way easier and improve future developement.

- Process handling. The mintUpdate process is now called "mintUpdate", you can see it with "ps -A" and kill it with "killall mintUpdate". Also there is a mechanism in version 1.3 which prevents multiple instances of mintUpdate to run at the same time. When run with root privileges mintUpdate will kill all other instances, when run in user mode a popup will appear explaining why mintUpdate is not starting.

- Icons handling. mintUpdate used to get its icons from the the Gnome icon theme... obviously this created some problems under KDE, so mintUpdate now comes with its own icons.

- Menu entry. You can now run mintUpdate from the menu in Gnome. This menu entry is available via a new package called mintupdate-gnome.

You can get the debs for it here:

http://linuxmint.com/repository/daryna/ ... 3_i386.deb
http://linuxmint.com/repository/daryna/ ... 0_i386.deb

It should be compatible with Cassandra and Celena.

And as usual, you're more than welcome to give us your comments and feedback on this.

Clem

Post by **clem** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 6:53 pm

oh sorry... I forgot to mention the best of it all:

- auto-refresh in user-mode: mintUpdate can now refresh itself in user mode, so if an application performed an apt-get update, mintUpdate should pick it up in the next 5 minutes (the time is configurable in the preferences).

also in version 1.3, default values have been changed to:

- 5 minutes for the auto-refresh
- levels 1, 2 and 3 safe and visible
- levels 4 and 5 unsafe and invisible

Clem

Sagasha · Post by **Sagasha** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 8:05 pm

Works fine. I have it installed in KDE. Made it a selection in my system menu. Thanks!

red-e-made · Post by **red-e-made** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:14 am

GATHER 'ROUND, CHILDREN! As I tell you the story of the smart-ass know-it-all who went ahead and installed Update Manager and Update Notifier on Celena, not heeding the warnings given by Mint developers, and ended up frying his system.

That's right - earlier today I received an update for some KDE packages (sorry, don't remember which) and upon re-booting, got this bizarre "Sorry couldn't find X - Basically you're screwed LOL" message. Fortunately, I always carry the LiveCd with me, but I still had to log into my old home folder as root, change a bunch of folder permissions, and rescue some material to save on a Flash drive before re-installing. Ended up having to overwrite a bunch of animu tho.

I always take the precaution of making a list of my system settings on a text file that I keep on a Flash, along with important files, so setting everything up again should take no more than 45 minutes or so. But I have mintUpdate installed now, and I love the format for it. I am very pleased with this.

So HEED MY WORDS, folks! It can happen to you, too.

(PS: I'm still allowing for kernel updates. I mean, c'mon. Seriously.)

red-e-made · Post by **red-e-made** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 1:07 am

By the way - is there a reason why mintUpdate shows me 2 safe updates for Firefox, but when I press "install updates", it does nothing?

@go · Post by **@go** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:16 am

Good, but still doesn't include KDE in the mintUpdate file, I had to add it manually.

red-e-made · Post by **red-e-made** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:00 am

eagle wrote:@ red-e-made

I have a snapshot of my update section of Synaptic. The first four are KDE related, do you recognize them?

THOSE ARE THE BASTARDS!

Serves me right for making an uneducated update.

HOWEVER, CLEM, please note that in mintAssistant I asked to recieve kernel updates, and yet, as has been pointed out, these are considered "dangerous" to mintUpdate?

Also, when I select "Quit" for mintUpdate in my panel, my Network Manager magically disappears with it.

I'm no developer, but I think mintUpdate 1.3 might be still a ways from being stable per se.

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:25 am

Sagasha: show me the content of your menu entry file (and tell me which category it appears under), I'll make a mintupdate-kde package for it.

ElementalTJ: mintUpdate does update itself... it's just that we haven't put it in the repositories yet ... for this reason it can't see itself

ElementalTJ: Yes, Daryna is mint 4.0 based on Celena/Gutsy

alexander: you can't run more than one instance of mintUpdate 1.3.. it's probably an old mintUpdate 1.2 that you didn't kill (I hope

).

red-e-made: if you know which packages caused the problem we can add a warning on them and make their level higher...

red-e-made: for the firefox problem, go to /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintUpdate/logs, do "ls -lrt" and show me the content of the file that appears at the bottom.

eagle: ok let's focus on mysql-common 5.0.38-0ubuntu1.1... you mean it appears in synaptic but not in mintUpdate? Can you type "sudo apt-get" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" and see if it's in there? Also check with "sudo wajig toupgrade".

red-e-made: can you reproduce the network-manager problem more than once? does it happen all the time? As for kernel upgrades in mintassistant that feature was removed from it.

OK, we're getting a lot of feedback here.. not enough to fix anything yet but keep up the good work guys.

Clem

Husse · Post by **Husse** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:26 am

I think Clem forgot to change the text on the auto refresh tab - it now runs in user mode

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:28 am

Thanks Husse... I did alright

Clem

red-e-made · Post by **red-e-made** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:05 am

clem wrote:red-e-made: can you reproduce the network-manager problem more than once? does it happen all the time? As for kernel upgrades in mintassistant that feature was removed from it.

OK, we're getting a lot of feedback here.. not enough to fix anything yet but keep up the good work guys.

Clem

Yep, every time. Actually, mintUpdate will disappear my Network Manager when checking for updates, when it has been Quit, and when it's not doing anything. The Network Manager just . . . goes arbitrarily. I'm still connected to the internet, it's just not on the panel.

I've temporarily uninstalled mintUpdate until I figure out what to do with it. I really love the concept and the interface, though. Hope we can get these little buggies worked out.

red-e-made · Post by **red-e-made** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:12 am

And by the by, clem, the packages that fried my system were the ones Eagle had in his screencap. I have no idea if the fault was mine or theirs, but a fresh re-install was required.

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:32 am

Ede: give me an example of a package from a non-signed pgp repository.... (and give me the repo as well

).

Clem

Sagasha · Post by **Sagasha** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 10:27 am

Clem,
I'm pretty much a noob, but is this what you wanted? I will also paste a snapshot.

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN" "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/me ... 0/menu.dtd">
<Menu>
<Menu>
<Name>System</Name>
<Layout>
<Merge type="files" />
<Filename>Mint Update.desktop</Filename>
<Merge type="menus" />
<Menuname>Terminal</Menuname>
<Filename>kde-keep.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-kpowersave.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>beryl-manager.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>beryl-settings.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>qtparted.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-dolphin.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-krusader_root-mode.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-guarddog.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-kinfocenter.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-hwdb-kde.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-adept_manager.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>ntfs-config.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-kpackage.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>synaptic-kde.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-ksysguard.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>hplip-kubuntu.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-ksystemlog.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-kcron.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>kde-konsole.desktop</Filename>
<Filename>envy.desktop</Filename>
<Separator/>
<Menuname>More</Menuname>
</Layout>
<Include>
<Filename>Mint Update.desktop</Filename>
</Include>
</Menu>
</Menu>

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 11:15 am

Sagasha: it's the content of Mint Update.desktop I'm asking about

It's probably in /usr/share/applications/kde/

Clem

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:40 pm

Ede: Ok... it looks like the problem comes from wajig. If you type "sudo wajig toupgrade" you'll see only the signed packages (that's what mintUpdate is relying on).. but if you type "sudo wajig showupgrade | grep "Inst "" then you'll see everything... I guess I need to base mintUpdate on this instead.. it's going to take some time.

Clem

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 4:11 pm

It actually has nothing to do with the gpg signature, signing the repo doesn't solve it. and I looked into the code of wajig... it's not related to toupgrade either... really strange. Either I'll use showupgrade or I'll try using the python apt bindings like I did in mintInstall...

Clem

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:34 pm

Ok I fixed the problem Ede... and I got rid of the wajig dependency altogether. You might still notice a little difference between the number shown by synaptic and mintUpdate 1.4 but that's just because of the newly packages installed via dependencies (shown by synaptic, not by mintupdate). In the end, mintUpdate 1.4 does show all upgrades... still a mistery why wajig didn't do that but hey it's gone now

Also... if I have time, I will add an option in the mintUpdate preferences so you can decide whether it shows "upgrades" or "dist-upgrades"...

Clem

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 5:54 pm

I suppose there's no need to be lazy... the dist-upgrade option is now implemented and available in the preferences. It will be delivered with the rest of the improvements into version 1.4. It's a simple checkbox which lets you choose whether you want mintUpdate to perform upgrade or dist-upgrade to find out the list of available packages.

Clem

Post by **clem** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:40 pm

Ok.. I suppose there's really no need to be lazy. mintupdate 1.4 now shows packages which are not installed but would be because of dependencies triggered by an upgrade on another package... so basically it shows you what synaptic does

You can recognize these packages in mintUpdate because they don't have any "installed version".

I suppose I'll sleep during the week-end (oh no.. the world cup is on.. ah well I'll sleep next week then

).

Clem

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