Hello,

One of my systems in an old Pentium III (Coppermine).
python-updater will not complete. It echoes one
line and then sits indefinately (for a day or more).

The system is a minimal (static html) apache 2 web server.
It has 128 meg of ram.

emerge sync and updates all work fine

Here's what else happens:

# eselect python list
!!! Error: Can't load module python


thoughts and ideas are most welcome.


James

On 10/23/08, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> One of my systems in an old Pentium III (Coppermine).
> python-updater will not complete. It echoes one
> line and then sits indefinately (for a day or more).
...
> Here's what else happens:
>
> # eselect python list
> !!! Error: Can't load module python
>
>
> thoughts and ideas are most welcome.

Some thoughts, not really informed, but trying to lure some better
experts and ideas out:

- Maybe you should run python-updater with several "-v" options? Maybe
it will become more talkative? (See man page and/or the script itself)

- Maybe the disks or filesystems have some problems or bit-rot after
having possibly been powered on 24/7 for a long time? Has there been
power outages? Voluntary fsck time!

- Has something happened to your scanelf? emerge -1 pax-utils might
fix some issues

- I'd guess eselect python complaining like above is probably just
normal, unless you're supposed to have eselect-python package
installed (many systems probably don't and you say your system is sort
of minimal anyway?)

- Does anything unusual appear in /var/log/messages or other logs?

--
Arttu V.

On Wed, 2008-10-22 at 23:23 +0000, James wrote:
> Hello,
>
> One of my systems in an old Pentium III (Coppermine).
> python-updater will not complete. It echoes one
> line and then sits indefinately (for a day or more).
>

Perhaps you can run strace (or bash -x) on it to see where it's hanging.

[...]
> Here's what else happens:
>
> # eselect python list
> !!! Error: Can't load module python

Probably because there is no eselect module for python installed (there
isn't one on any my machines).

-a

Arttu V. <arttuv69 <at> gmail.com> writes:


> run python-updater with several "-v" options?

Here's what I get:


Starting Python Updater from 2.4 to 2.5 :
check "soname" enabled.
check "pylibdir" enabled.
check "eclass" disabled.
check "manual" enabled.

<then it hangs>

> - Maybe the disks or filesystems have some problems or bit-rot after
> having possibly been powered on 24/7 for a long time? Has there been
> power outages? Voluntary fsck time!

It's on a high quality UPS. The Hard drive may have problems, but, I see
no evidence of this. All else compiles and it runs fine, for long
periods of time with no problems. The HD is less than 13%
full....


> - Has something happened to your scanelf? emerge -1 pax-utils

I did the 'emerge -1 pax-utils' and
when I launch python-updater scanelf runs fine as I watch it
via top.

When python-updater actually starts up, that's when the load goes
to 3 or 4 and it just sleeps (as seen in top).


> - I'd guess eselect python complaining like above is probably just
> normal, unless you're supposed to have eselect-python package
> installed (many systems probably don't and you say your system is sort
> of minimal anyway?)

Correct, eselect-python is not installed, so it should not run.
I saw this in a bugs.gentoo.org thread and thought it might help.
I do not think I even need this? (no python whiz here).


> - Does anything unusual appear in /var/log/messages or other logs?

nope, just cron and syslog messages. Nothing out of the ordinary....

Albert Hopkins <marduk <at> letterboxes.org> writes:


> Perhaps you can run strace (or bash -x) on it to see where it's hanging.

Oh, I would not know the syntax. No man page for strace. more info?
syntax suggestions? The machine hoses everytime I run python-update.


> > # eselect python list
> > !!! Error: Can't load module python

> Probably because there is no eselect module for python installed (there
> isn't one on any my machines).

Right, so now I installed it and it says:


Available python interpreters:
[1] python2.4
[2] python2.5 *

So why does python-updater have to be used at all?
Everything else seems fine....


James

On Fri, Oct 24, 2008 at 3:38 PM, James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> Albert Hopkins <marduk <at> letterboxes.org> writes:
>
>
>> Perhaps you can run strace (or bash -x) on it to see where it's hanging.
>
> Oh, I would not know the syntax. No man page for strace. more info?
> syntax suggestions? The machine hoses everytime I run python-update.

Weird, it has a man page on my system. Have you got strace installed
at all? dev-util/strace

strace --help will show you commands as well.

On Fri, 2008-10-24 at 20:38 +0000, James wrote:
> Albert Hopkins <marduk <at> letterboxes.org> writes:
>
>
> > Perhaps you can run strace (or bash -x) on it to see where it's hanging.
>
> Oh, I would not know the syntax. No man page for strace. more info?
> syntax suggestions? The machine hoses everytime I run python-update.

Probably no man page because it's likely not installed.

# emerge strace

But the generic way of running it is

# strace python-updater


>
> > > # eselect python list
> > > !!! Error: Can't load module python
>
> > Probably because there is no eselect module for python installed (there
> > isn't one on any my machines).
>
> Right, so now I installed it and it says:
>
>
> Available python interpreters:
> [1] python2.4
> [2] python2.5 *
>
> So why does python-updater have to be used at all?
> Everything else seems fine....


The python-updater and eselect module do completely different things.
All the eselect module probably does is update a
symlink: /usr/bin/python => python2.5. What python-updater is supposed
to do is take all the packages that were emerged against python2.4 and
re-emerge them agains python2.5. Basically what it does is identify all
the files in /usr/lib/python-<oldversion>/site-packages, associates them
with packages and re-emerges those packages. It's a shell script so
running:

# bash -x /usr/sbin/python-updater

should give you some indication as to where it's hanging.

Hope this helps.
-a

Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo <at> gmail.com> writes:


> > Oh, I would not know the syntax. No man page for strace. more info?
> > syntax suggestions?

> strace --help will show you commands as well.


Working too late at night...

Strace is not install on the minimalistic server, but, I have man
pages on other machines... I'll give it a whirl....



James

Albert Hopkins <marduk <at> letterboxes.org> writes:


> > > Perhaps you can run strace (or bash -x) on it to see where it's hanging.

> # bash -x /usr/sbin/python-updater


Simple enough:

<snip>
+ CATPKGVER==sys-apps/man-pages-2.78
+ [[ 0 = 2 ]]
+ [[ CHECK_PYLIBDIR -ne 0 ]]
+ grep -qe '/usr/(include|lib(32|64)?)/python2.4'
/var/db/pkg/sys-apps/man-pages-2.78/CONTENTS
+ [[ CHECK_SONAME -ne 0 ]]
++ scanelf -qBN libpython2.4.so.1.0
+++ grep -e '^obj' /var/db/pkg/sys-apps/man-pages-2.78/CONTENTS
+++ cut '-d ' -f2


I have already (twice) emerged scanelf (pax-utils 0.1.17).


Remember the system only has 128 meg of ram on a P3 (coppermine)
machine.

Here are the USE flags:
USE=" -X pic ncurses ssl crypt berkdb tcpd pam perl python php
postgres apache2
readline bzip2 nptl nptlonly syslog sse mmx hardened
gif gpm hal dvd jpeg
socketspm3 mpeg png spell udev unicode v4l v4l2
win32codecs ral x264 tiff
usb mjpeg mng snmp wmf pdf dbus wmp mp4 jpeg2k gs -kde -gtk -gnome "


thoughts or ideas?

James