[SOLVED] RPM installer borked

[flobnoit]

Hey all,

This is a problem that I acquired sometime during F15, and which sadly has followed me through into F16, and which I've only just become fed up enough with to enquire about...

The graphical RPM installer (whatever its name is; it runs when you double-click an RPM to install it in Gnome) will come up, but when I press "Install" it immediately returns with an error window "Could not process catalog". In the taskbar, the window is identified as being "Software Install". When I press close, I'm given another window, this one titled "Catalog Installer" and described thus:

The action could not be completedThe request failed. More details are available in the detailed report.

[More details:]

failed to parse catalog: Key file contains line '����' which is not a key-value pair, group, or comment

I've been avoiding this problem by simply installing directly with 'rpm -ivh' but I'd like to have a functional GUI installer again if possible. Any thoughts on what the issue may be/how to address it?

[mschwendt]

Your post could give a few more details. What other parts of the package GUI still work?

If you start "Applications > Add/Remove Software" or "Applications > Software Update", do those still work?

If you open a terminal, log in as superuser root and run "pkcon refresh", does that change anything with regard to your GUI problems?

[progulschik]

same problem.
0) RPM installer works normal.
1) did "applications->software update. "
2) RPM installer die. last words:"A problem in the gnome-packagekit-3.2.1-1.fc16 package has been detected" and "Process /usr/bin/gpk-dbus-service was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)"
3) after"sudo pkcon refresh" goto 2)

If this may help, message from term, when try to refresh

** (gpk-dbus-service:19095): CRITICAL **: dbus_g_proxy_new_for_name_owner: assertion `connection != NULL' failed

** (gpk-dbus-service:19095): WARNING **: The connection is closed

(gpk-dbus-service:19095): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

[mschwendt]

@ progulschik

That's a new problem, however, and a segmentation fault crash. Try to report it via ABRT. It could be that it will be flagged as just a duplicate. There are several similar bug reports listed at http://bugz.fedoraproject.org/gnome-packagekit already.

[progulschik]

It's wery shame, that bugs after updating came not only to package manager. I updated system less then 2 hours ago, for that momen I can't start samba server too. Waiting new "surprises" from updating.

Originally Posted by progulschik

same problem.
0) RPM installer works normal.
1) did "applications->software update. "
2) RPM installer die. last words:"A problem in the gnome-packagekit-3.2.1-1.fc16 package has been detected" and "Process /usr/bin/gpk-dbus-service was killed by signal 11 (SIGSEGV)"
3) after"sudo pkcon refresh" goto 2)

If this may help, message from term, when try to refresh

** (gpk-dbus-service:19095): CRITICAL **: dbus_g_proxy_new_for_name_owner: assertion `connection != NULL' failed

** (gpk-dbus-service:19095): WARNING **: The connection is closed

(gpk-dbus-service:19095): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

What graphics card driver do you use?

[mschwendt]

Originally Posted by progulschik

It's wery shame, that bugs after updating came not only to package manager. I updated system less then 2 hours ago, for that momen I can't start samba server too. Waiting new "surprises" from updating.

Let's discuss specific bugs only, please. Then let's find out how to prevent something from happening again in the future. Much more testing feedback could be helpful, too. --> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates

It isn't productive to complain about new bugs introduced by updates in general.

[flobnoit]

Thanks mschwendt. I don't normally bother since detail requests can be all over the board.

No- everything else works. Add/Remove Software is functional, Software Update is still functional, yum works without issue, and as I said, rpm through terminal works without incident. The only reason I am so vague about what doesn't actually work is that I'm not entirely certain what it is that actually is broken.

'pkcon refresh' didn't do anything. What interests me about the error is the unresolved characters that it gives me; and the fact that the "phrase" always seems to be the same length long (three of the question marks in diamonds, followed by 4 numbers in a box the size of a character, which it doesn't appear rendered here).

Anything else you can throw at me? I suppose I could tail the issue, but does that log GUI errors? I'll need guidance on the syntax if that's the case; I've never really understood tail.

[progulschik]

Originally Posted by Yellowman

What graphics card driver do you use?

nouveau. card nVidia gt220. by the way, own NVIDIA drivers stop booting in activating sendmail agent.

yum works normal.

[mschwendt]

The program is gpk-install-local-file from package "gnome-packagekit" (several programs in that package). One can run it in a terminal like "gpk-install-local-file /path/to/some/file.rpm". The absolute path to the package seems to be important. The error message can also be found in its source code:

src/gpk-dbus-task.c: error_dbus = g_error_new (GPK_DBUS_ERROR, GPK_DBUS_ERROR_FAILED, "failed to parse catalog: %s", error->message);

http://bugz.fedoraproject.org/gnome-packagekit lists tons of issues. Also some related to interfacing with D-BUS.

Originally Posted by flobnoit

Anything else you can throw at me?

Not really. I've abandonded Fedora 16 already and have moved on to Fedora 17. It might be that the problem would not be easily reproducible with F-16. And if it's not reproducible, intimate knowledge of the program and its system integration is needed to recognize what is/may be wrong. I haven't seen that error before, so that could result in a longer series of questions (sort of searching for a "needle in the haystack") and tasks for you. From stuff like verifying installed packages, testing with SELinux permissive mode, checking running services, checking system logs. Could get tedious. Endurance power and self-interest required.

Typically, it's better to report it as a bug and mention what else works. It could be that it's an error that could be handled (or evaded) somewhere more appropriately. Provided that it doesn't happen only because of a corrupted installation. Perhaps F-17 will still be able to run into such an error condition, perhaps not just after upgrading from your affected installation.

I suppose I could tail the issue, but does that log GUI errors? I'll need guidance on the syntax if that's the case; I've never really understood tail.

Some GUI apps print a lot of debugging stuff when you start them from within a terminal. The "tail" command is only an input processor that prints the last lines of one or more large files.

[flobnoit]

Ah. Well, then...

Thanks for the help! I guess I'm curious: what's your recommendation- to install F17 clean or to preupgrade over my F16? I'm no longer trying to use this as my main desktop (windows incompatability issues that were just unresolvable with software I need for work) I'm perfectly fine with it being less than stable (although in my experience, the Fedora Betas have been really pretty problem free)

[Fenrin]

Originally Posted by flobnoit

Ah. Well, then...

Thanks for the help! I guess I'm curious: what's your recommendation- to install F17 clean or to preupgrade over my F16? I'm no longer trying to use this as my main desktop (windows incompatability issues that were just unresolvable with software I need for work) I'm perfectly fine with it being less than stable (although in my experience, the Fedora Betas have been really pretty problem free)

it's better to do a clean install of Fedora 17.

And about the windows incompatibility: Did you try it via wine or virtualbox yet? Virtualbox-ose is in the rpmfusion repo. It's pretty easy to use. It also has a option for basic 3D support, but if you need good 3D performance in your applications it's better to either use Windows (outside of VirtualBox) or try wine emulator.

a wine application database is here: http://appdb.winehq.org/

[flobnoit]

Cheers mate, but yes, I tried all of that already. Wine's never been stable on this system for me, and even though I stuck Xp in a VirtualBox, my corporate VPN software wasn't cooperating with it. I'm just too busy to sink the time into making Fedora compatible with my corporate requirements.

ALSO!
Does the Install DVD or the LiveCD provide a more stable base installation? Theoreticallly they should be able to be identical (with the DVD allowing for more to be installed without net connectivity), but I also know that in Linux, theory and actuality tend to have very different ideas of what's-what...

[flobnoit]

OK -

Just finished doing a clean install of F17Beta, and the problem persists. So, logically it appears we're down to some setting in my Home folder (as I keep my home partition unchanged through installs). Any thoughts?

[Fenrin]

Originally Posted by flobnoit

OK -

Just finished doing a clean install of F17Beta, and the problem persists. So, logically it appears we're down to some setting in my Home folder (as I keep my home partition unchanged through installs). Any thoughts?

are you using the same user folder with the configuration files of Fedora 16 or 15?
If that's the case, maybe create a new user (command "useradd") with different user folder and look if the issue persists.