[NTLUG:Discuss] SuSE 9.2 Updates -- LOOKOUT!

[Stephen Davidson]

Chris Cox wrote:

> Stephen Davidson wrote:
>
>> Greetings.
>>
>> <vent>
>> I am REALLY beginning to HATE SuSE's updates.  I have lost 85% of the 
>> functionality of my main work laptop because of an update from SuSE 
>> (a driver became corrupted -- to the point where I need to downshift 
>> to SuSE 8.2 to get this machine working again).  And now another 
>> poison update has taken down the ListServer on my server????  WTF has 
>> happened to SuSE's Quality Control?  This was not an issue before 
>> Novell purchased them!
>> </vent>
>> Serious Question: What is up with SuSE updates all of a sudden?  I 
>> have NEVER had trouble with them before, and now I am watching 
>> systems drop faster than MS systems????  Downgrading is going to take 
>> time that I don't have for this kind of nonsense.
>
>
>
>
> I'm surprised about the problem since SUSE
> (and it's the same folks basically just reporting ultimately to
> someone at Novell) tends to do a reasonable job with updates (they
> backport fixes rather than moving you up... 2.6.11 is a killer for
> example unless you know what to do).  I know I've received all of the
> latest updates and haven't had anything "drop".  Can you be more specific
> about the corrupted driver, etc?
>
> Just curious,
> Chris
>
Hi Chris.

With the Driver, unfortunately no I can't be more specific.  And the 
corrupted driver is just a guess, but based on some observation and 
experimentation.  Basically, what is happening is at fixed intervals (I 
forget if it is every 3 sec's or every 5 sec's), the system "locks up" 
for 1/2 sec.  During this time, CPU load for the system spikes to %100.  
And anytime I try to do anything that requires any kind of work on the 
system, it is slow and sluggish.  Just bringing up Eclipse (an IDE) runs 
the system load up to 5 - 7.  A project build can run the load as high 
as 25 and take 1.5hrs or more.  (Build of same project, in 9.1 before 
the upgrade, system load of 4, time elapsed, < 5 minutes, and that was 
BEFORE a mess of code in the project was refactored out into another 
project!).

What is really bizarre is that fact that when the system is cold booted, 
it behaves normally until the first time a load is put on it.  Short 
loads are no problem.  Longer loads trigger the above behaviour.  I 
don't have what the "cutoff" is, but normally, just logging in to KDE 
does not trigger this (unless something causes KDE to take longer than 
normal, such as another "heavy" process running - in which case starting 
KDE will take 3 - 5 minutes to start).

I don't have the skills to chase down this type of failure, nor the time 
to acquire the skills.  If anybody wants to have a look, I will be happy 
to make arrangements to meet so one can "play".  Among other things, 
this has taken down my ability to backup the information from that 
machine.  Backups take in excess of 3 days, so I can't back up over a 
weekend.  This has me trying to literally shift everything off of that 
machine, on to other machines, and set up a duplicate environment on 
another machine.  Not fun, and not quick.

FYI, I started running into issues (minor) with SuSE 9.0, and some more 
with 9.1 (what is currently installed, and issues were especially with 
Power Management & KDE "memory"), but I have NEVER had a machine go down 
like this because of an upgrade/patch.  Since SuSE 7.0 (when I first 
started using Linux), once I had something up and running, it stayed 
up.  This may wind up chasing me off of SuSE completely.

Btw, the machine in question is a Dell Latitude C640.  Only change from 
default factory specs is some extra RAM.

Regards,
Steve

-- 
Java/J2EE Developer/Integrator
Stephen Davidson and Associates, Inc.
Vice President, DFW JavaMUG (http://javamug.org)
Past Chair, Dallas/FortWorth J2EE Sig
214-724-7741