upgrade / laptop issues

[Tony Jones]

Two distinct issues here (but alas related):

1) I installed FC3T1.   fedora/linux/core/test/2.90

A long time ago.

I noticed that the laptop I installed would tend to power off (not a shutdown,
just totally power off without warning) after a few hours of console idle (didn't matter if there were remote ssh connections active).

I'm thinking FC3 may be trying to do some form of power management.
Can I change the config somehow?  The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 5100 (bios A29)
and I don't see anything in BIOS/setup related to power management but I'm also
not very familiar with the laptop.



2) I finally, after nearly a month of beating on up2date and yum I got an
upgrade running.    After fixing deps manually, I finally gave up on up2date
as it wanted me to manually confirm for each rpm that it was ok for it to not
have a valid signature.  Grief.

Yum would keep generating index exceptions (nice error) until I manually
created a new yum.conf pointing to an alternate d/l locatiom.

With this, finally, success .....  
# yum -y -c yum.conf --obsolete update

It downloaded all the headers, got past deps, downloaded all the rpms and
started installing them ..... and then powered off (#1) above :-(

I was logged on via a remote ssh into a screen session when it went south.
Output was:

...
...
gimp-data-extras 100 % done 1003/2474
gimp-print-plugin 100 % done 1004/2474
gimp-devel 100 % done 1005/2474
rhythmbox 100 % done 1006/2474
[Invalid UTF-8] Could not parse file '/usr/share/applications/net-xfig.desktop':
+desktop entry contain line
+'Comment[ja]=\xa5\xc9\xa5\xed\xa1\xbc\xa5\xc4\xa1\xbc\xa5\xebxfig' which is not
+UTF-8
gnome-bluetooth 100 % done 1007/2474
gnome-games 100 % done 1008/2474
Read from remote host dhcp-240: Connection timed out
Connection to dhcp-240 closed.

Now, if I try another yum (same cmd line as above) things seem badly borked.

[root at dhcp-240 tony]# yum -y -c yum.conf --obsolete update
Setting up Update Process
Setting up Repo:  development
repomd.xml                100% |=========================| 1.1 kB    00:00
Reading repository metadata in from local files
developmen: ################################################## 3423/3423
Excluding Packages
Excluding Incompatible Archs
Finished
Excluding Packages from Fedora Core 2.90 - Development Tree
Resolving Dependencies
Error: Requiring package xorg-x11-Xvfb-6.7.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                              nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package iiimf-le-xcin-0.1.5-4.i386 not in transaction set                              nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package xorg-x11-twm-6.7.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package iiimf-gtk-11.4-64.svn1772.i386 not in transaction set                                  nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package koffice-i18n-1.3.2-1.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-devel-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                          nor in rpmdb
Error: udev conflicts:  mkinitrd<= 0:4.1.11-1
Error: Requiring package kdenetwork-devel-3.2.3-2.i386 not in transaction set                                 nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdebase-devel-3.2.3-1.i386 not in transaction set                              nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-xmlrpc-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                           nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package xorg-x11-devel-6.7.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                               nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package gnome-python2-canvas-2.0.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                                   nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package iiimf-server-11.4-64.svn1772.i386 not in transaction set                                   nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-ncurses-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                            nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdepim-devel-3.2.3-1.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-mbstring-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-imap-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                         nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-pear-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                         nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-ldap-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                         nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdeartwork-icons-3.2.3-1.i386 not in transaction set                                 nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package xorg-x11-xfs-6.7.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-domxml-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                           nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdegraphics-devel-3.2.3-1.i386 not in transaction set                                  nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-odbc-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                         nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdeedu-devel-3.2.3-1.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdemultimedia-devel-3.2.3-2.i386 not in transaction set                                   nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package xorg-x11-Xnest-6.7.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                               nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package gnome-python2-gconf-2.0.0-6.i386 not in transaction set                                   nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdesdk-devel-3.2.3-1.i386 not in transaction set                             nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-snmp-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                         nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-gd-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                       nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package php-pgsql-4.3.7-4.i386 not in transaction set                          nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package katana-build-1.0.4-4.noarch not in transaction set                               nor in rpmdb
Error: Requiring package kdebindings-devel-3.2.3-2.i386 not in transaction set                                  nor in rpmdb



ANY SUGGESTIONS? Clearly I need to solve the problem of it powering off 
immediately, but after this, is there an alternate to a total reinstall from
ISO?



This is my yum info in case it matters:

[root at dhcp-240 tony]# rpm -qa | grep yum
yum-2.1.3-1

[root at dhcp-240 tony]# rpm -qa | grep python-2
python-2.3.4-10
libxml2-python-2.6.11-1
python-2.3.4-4

[root at dhcp-240 tony]# cat yum.conf
[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=fedora-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
  
[development]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - Development Tree
baseurl=http://mirror.hiwaay.net/redhat/fedora/linux/core/development/i386



Thanks

Tony