F8: Package Manager - desktop stalled

[Daniel B. Thurman]

David Timms wrote:
>Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 12:26 AM
>To: For users of Fedora
>Subject: Re: F8: Package Manager - desktop stalled
>Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>> Daniel B. Thurman writes:
>>> I cannot even access the F1 or anything to see what is going on.
>>>
>>> What can I do at this point except perhaps to do a forced system
>>> reboot?  Isn't there something I can do before attempting such a
>>> drastic move?
>> 
>> If you can't even move the cursor and your entire desktop is frozen, 
>> either your entire kernel, or X.org, has crashed. This has 
>nothing to do 
>> with the package manager.
>> 
>> The only thing you can do is reboot.
>That is if the kernel crashed.
>
>If x.org or something else is the problem:
>- when you said F1 did you mean ctrl-alt-F1, F2 etc ?
>- ctrl-alt-backspace should kill the current x session, causing the 
>logon screen to be shown
>- it might still be accessible from the network over ssh; sometimes 
>using vnc might allow you to find what is going on, or at 
>least capture 
>screen shots, run top, check disk space, check external connectivity.
>- next time you run package manager - start it from a terminal window, 
>in case it is providing some sort of error messages.
>
>DaveT.
>

Unfortunately, I did not try C-A-F1, 2, ...  but it seemed that the
entire system crashed - no disk activity, the screen appeared frozen,
mouse dead.  R.I.P.

I cannot understand why Package Manager did not at least cause it even
if only might have exaberated the symptoms.  Dunno.  I wonder if I
"overloaded" PM by selecting "everything" in the package list that
caused it to wheeze and die.  I don't know.

I rebooted and proceeded directly to PM, and did a "one package category
at a time" selection and so far it is working, no crash, albeit very very
slow.  Maybe that is just because of massive MB downloads.  Again, I
don't know.  Has anyone tested PM by trying to select "everything" and
see what happens?  Just a thought.  I am just trying to get my system
running with all I can throw at it.  Developer's tools and all.

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.16.15/1173 - Release Date: 12/5/2007 9:29 PM