I'll try to give some background, because I do not have a really good idea why this is happening.
It seemed to start when I tried to install Adobe-Digital-Editions (ADE), so I could read an ebook borrowed from the local public library. I installed wine, and attempted to install ADE. At the end of the install process, the console went into a kind of loop, with the same message repeated over and over in rapid succession. (I did not have the presence of mind to try to record this message).
This through my session into a dysfunctional state, so I rebooted. Or restarted the display manager, I don't remember. Neither GDM nor Lightdm have started again, in a number of days. I was able to start i3 and xfce4, through startx with correct lines in .xinitrc.
I uninstalled wine and ADE, then recently tried again to reinstall, with the thought this experience may have been a fluke. The same exact message popped up when executing "wine install.exe".
This system is in pretty decent shape. It's been up running for many months, with quite a number of packages from the pacman distros as well as AUR; I have never had a serious problem that I could not easily figure out. Arch Linux has become my goto distro, as it just works, and maintainance is not a hugely time consuming or hit and miss affair as has been my experience with Gentoo.
I have now installed manjaro and redcore, on the same laptop. I have removed Fedora 26, which turned quirky after a few weeks (which I installed so I would be able to advise a friend in the case of any troubles). Manjaro is easy to install; it's nice to be able to use AUR, but even if I avoid any wrinkles, it will take days to get this installation into shape.
I come to you hoping for some light to be shed on this problem. At the bare minimum I would like to generate a list of installed packages of all kinds (AUR and pacman). I truly hope, however, to find the problem, and fix it. I can copy the files in my home directory, and copy them over to a new installation. d
Does this description make any sense to someone?
Thank you for reading this far.
Alan Davis
On Sat, 25 Nov 2017 22:13:51 -0800, Alan E. Davis wrote:
It seemed to start when I tried to install Adobe-Digital-Editions (ADE), so I could read an ebook borrowed from the local public library. I installed wine, and attempted to install ADE. At the end of the install process, the console went into a kind of loop, with the same message repeated over and over in rapid succession. (I did not have the presence of mind to try to record this message).
This through my session into a dysfunctional state, so I rebooted. Or restarted the display manager, I don't remember. Neither GDM nor Lightdm have started again, in a number of days. I was able to start i3 and xfce4, through startx with correct lines in .xinitrc.
I uninstalled wine and ADE, then recently tried again to reinstall, with the thought this experience may have been a fluke. The same exact message popped up when executing "wine install.exe". [snip] I have now installed manjaro and redcore, on the same laptop. [snip]
Actually you don't have installed Arch Linux?
Does this description make any sense to someone?
No, it doesn't make sense to me. At least consider to post this "exact message". However, there's no plausible reason that installing something odd by wine, could affect your Linux install.
Perhaps Manjaro is broken. Consider to install Arch Linux.
To clarify, I have been running the same Arch Linux installation for many months, without a hitch. Until this event. The exact message since that time has been (on a gray screen) "Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can't recover. Please log out and try again." I have seen other reports online of this message, but for various purported root causes.
I will reinstall Arch Linux, no doubt, unless I can fix this.
Thank you,
Alan
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 1:30 AM, Ralf Mardorf silver.bullet@zoho.com wrote:
On Sat, 25 Nov 2017 22:13:51 -0800, Alan E. Davis wrote:
It seemed to start when I tried to install Adobe-Digital-Editions (ADE), so I could read an ebook borrowed from the local public library. I installed wine, and attempted to install ADE. At the end of the install process, the console went into a kind of loop, with the same message repeated over and over in rapid succession. (I did not have the presence of mind to try to record this message).
This through my session into a dysfunctional state, so I rebooted. Or restarted the display manager, I don't remember. Neither GDM nor Lightdm have started again, in a number of days. I was able to start i3 and xfce4, through startx with correct lines in .xinitrc.
I uninstalled wine and ADE, then recently tried again to reinstall, with the thought this experience may have been a fluke. The same exact message popped up when executing "wine install.exe". [snip] I have now installed manjaro and redcore, on the same laptop. [snip]
Actually you don't have installed Arch Linux?
Does this description make any sense to someone?
No, it doesn't make sense to me. At least consider to post this "exact message". However, there's no plausible reason that installing something odd by wine, could affect your Linux install.
Perhaps Manjaro is broken. Consider to install Arch Linux.
Op 26 nov. 2017 10:52 schreef "Alan E. Davis via arch-general" < arch-general@archlinux.org>:
To clarify, I have been running the same Arch Linux installation for many months, without a hitch. Until this event. [...]
I will reinstall Arch Linux, no doubt, unless I can fix this.
A quicker way may be to try another user first.
My best guesses; you use some desktop environment and it has included wine's .desktop files and made at least one of them default for $action.
So at some point, you ask your DE to execute $action; Let's say you open a JPEG file in a filemanager. The file manager looks up the default program, finds that it is wine related and executes the corresponding command. That program crashes for whatever reason, making it look like the entire system is broken (which it isn't necessarily).
So, will an mkfs, followed by a fresh Arch install fix the problem? Probably, until you repeat the same steps, ending up in the same situation...
An easier approach may be to create a new user, log in with that and repeat the action (in the example above, opening a JPEG). Same error? Then it's something system wide. No error? Then the problem hides in the homedir of the first user.
Though, on second thought; the entire problem could be just ADE ;). If the problem is that it auto-starts on logon or whatever, try renaming the wine directory (~/.wine) first. That's just about comparable to reinstalling Windows...
Where it comes to ADE: Can't help there, i'm afraid. I limit my collection to drm-free materials (organised with Calibre).
Ps I often used $WINEPREFIX to separate Windows programs from one another.
Mvg, Guus Snijders
On Sun, 26 Nov 2017 13:15:06 +0100, Guus Snijders wrote:
Though, on second thought; the entire problem could be just ADE ;). If the problem is that it auto-starts on logon or whatever, try renaming the wine directory (~/.wine) first. That's just about comparable to reinstalling Windows...
For troubleshooting this would be a good thing to do. I doubt that something installed by wine does affect the Linux display manager, but it doesn't harm to (re)move wine.
Off-topic:
Where it comes to ADE: Can't help there, i'm afraid. I limit my collection to drm-free materials (organised with Calibre).
It doesn't help the OP, but it's the same for me, I reject DRM completely, resp. I'm not willing to get an Adobe account, even while I got several meta-thingys for books I wish to own, for free as in beer. If people want to donate a book I like, they are free to donate a _book_ (made of paper) instead of a meta-file that requires to sign a contract with the devil.
The public library of my hometown at best is useful for interlending from neighbour town's university libraries, but this usually doesn't work and if it should work, the time you could read the book is ridiculous short, let alone that the costs for my hometown's public library is exorbitant high.
Culture in Germany isn't for averaged working people who make a living from wage floor, that's why I'm in favour of the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto: https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008_djvu.txt
Regards, Ralf
Op 26 nov. 2017 13:15 schreef "Guus Snijders" gsnijders@gmail.com:
Op 26 nov. 2017 10:52 schreef "Alan E. Davis via arch-general" < arch-general@archlinux.org>:
To clarify, I have been running the same Arch Linux installation for many months, without a hitch. Until this event. [...]
I will reinstall Arch Linux, no doubt, unless I can fix this.
A quicker way may be to try another user first.
My best guesses; you use some desktop environment and it
[...] If the problem is that it auto-starts on logon or whatever, try renaming the wine directory (~/.wine) first.
My apologies; while I was typing the initial response, I failed to take the subject into account. Though my main points stay, the first troubleshooting steps are easy; - log in (on a console, not X) as your "normal" user and rename the wine directory in $HOME. - then login in Gnome and see if the error still appears
If the error is gone, it was something with wine (though I can't see any reason for autostarting wine), and you can work from there.
If the error remains, try another user. If that works, it's something in the gnome config of user 1.
Mvg, Guus Snijders
On Sun, 26 Nov 2017 18:37:58 +0100, Guus Snijders wrote:
though I can't see any reason for autostarting wine
So your advice to create another user account seems to be more promising for troubleshooting.
Thank you for the tips.
I am able to run either i3 or xfce4 through startx. Not gnome. GDM will not work. I have made another account. I cannot start GDM as root, nor run Gnome through startx/.xinitrc, as root. For now, I am abandoning my experiment with Gnome on this machine. I will also try cinnamon or mate, perhaps enlightenment, and check where that ends up. I wonder whether it's related to Wayland, which I don't understand. The inability to boot up a DM is a concern. Thank you for your thoughts. You got me to thinking about my commitment to Free Software. I will re-double my vigilance against dependence on non-free infrastructure of any kind.
[The following is a probably excessive personal account of my problems and experiences with Non-Free vs Free Software. I hope they don't amount to excuse-making for my slide down the slippery slope. I apologize for this lengthy read.]
I laud your commitment to freedom. As a high school science teacher, it broke my heart to see that students would be deprived of (what I felt were) important online/digital learning opportunities, because they only ran, mainly, on Windoze, albeit many were available for the apple walled garden as well. I did not give up, and found they were able to run some of them, by various tricks. Printers could be used with workarounds, albeit, with my unsophisticated skills, not to their full capacity---even when I had paid the full price. My colleagues derided my stubborn determination to use GNU/Linux, when Windoze was purchased for us all through government funds. I worked in an isolated small district, where the powers that be, the administrators, believed the received wisdom that anything free must be deficient. (I was forced to install Windoze on Virtual Box to report grades.)
Most of the computers I have owned had graphics cards and network adapters with only proprietary drivers, or for which I greedily refused to use free drivers because i wanted to have the most computing power I could. I admit that I have followed the path of least resistance, and often used non-free drivers. I talked the talk, but did not always walk the walk. Even now, I have recently built a machine with an Nvidia graphics card, and have been using proprietary drives, for the free ones did not work as well. Truth be told, I did not understand the nuances of the distinction, or which cards were better using free drivers, although I had researched this to some extent.
I will consider using Parabola GNU/Linux, or Trisquel. In fact, I moved from Slackware to Debian, not only because of the wonderful packaging system, but also because of the association with the FSF. When Ubuntu and live CDs came around, it was easy to make that decision, and I was actually able to give a talk at which several other teachers installed Ubuntu on their school district-provided laptops.
About two years ago, I was hired for a new job. I went over to the dark side about 2 years ago, and purchased a high end Mac, when I learned that I would be forced to use an extremely slow mac book for all school related computer work. The ease of inter-operability was amazing. Emacs was actually on the system---something that is not true of any GNU/Linux distro I know about! I could install my important GNU/Linux tools, but the line was blurred: maintenance was a gordion knot, and the quality of the hardware was shaky. The Operating System was fancy, but was engineered to prevent sharing. I installed Arch Linux, but eventually I built a much better machine to run GNU/Linux, and gave it to my wife.
Adobe is a bad word. ADE is an grab for the soul of the digital library. I will take your remarks under advisement. It often seems that true Freedom is not as important to Americans anymore.
I am moved by your remarkable statements. I will make a new effort to divest myself of DRM laden materials and proprietary software. I cannot afford to buy a different video card or wifi-adapter, or, worse, a different laptop.
Thank you to the developers of Arch Linux. This distribution is leaps and bounds ahead of any other distro I have used. That is, while isolated bits of some other distributions are better, Arch Linux's stability and breadth of scope is unrivaled.
Alan Davis
On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 9:45 AM, Ralf Mardorf silver.bullet@zoho.com wrote:
On Sun, 26 Nov 2017 18:37:58 +0100, Guus Snijders wrote:
though I can't see any reason for autostarting wine
So your advice to create another user account seems to be more promising for troubleshooting.
-- $ pacman -Q linux{,-rt{,-cornflower,-pussytoes}}|awk '{print $2}' 4.14-2 4.13.13_rt5-1 4.11.12_rt16-1 4.14_rt1-1
On 11/26/2017 03:31 PM, Alan E. Davis via arch-general wrote:
Thank you for the tips.
I am able to run either i3 or xfce4 through startx. Not gnome. GDM will not work. I have made another account. I cannot start GDM as root, nor run Gnome through startx/.xinitrc, as root. For now, I am abandoning my experiment with Gnome on this machine. I will also try cinnamon or mate, perhaps enlightenment, and check where that ends up. I wonder whether it's related to Wayland, which I don't understand. The inability to boot up a DM is a concern. Thank you for your thoughts. You got me to thinking about my commitment to Free Software. I will re-double my vigilance against dependence on non-free infrastructure of any kind.
[The following is a probably excessive personal account of my problems and experiences with Non-Free vs Free Software. I hope they don't amount to excuse-making for my slide down the slippery slope. I apologize for this lengthy read.]
[...]
FWIW, the last time I tried running ADE through wine it worked flawlessly. Although that was a while ago as I try to avoid Adobe products when possible (at least Amazon manages to be user-friendly while aiding and abetting the industry standard Digital Restrictions Management ;)).
But it is worth noting that you should always use the earlier ADE releases, as ADE 3 and on allow vendors to enable even more highly-restricted-than-before DRM schemes and incidentally break E-Ink device compatibility in the process (which is quite sad even for their perspective).
ADE 1.7 has always worked quite well in wine, and is available via winetricks.
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