FreeBSD w/Mate Desktop (GhostBSD) Crash, Now Software Won't Start reddit / freebsd ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-13 21:27 Not sure if this is a good subreddit for this question, but I figured I'd give it a go anyway. I'm a new \*nix user, and I posted this question on the GhostBSD website forums, but think this might be more of either a Mate desktop problem, or a core FreeBSD issue. I got a notification that there was a software update, so I clicked it, and while it was running the system completely hung and had to be rebooted. When the login prompt came up, I logged back in, thinking everything was ok, but found that I many applications won't launch, including the MATE Terminal, Firefox, Iridium, Software Update, Software Station, etc. I noticed that even the network icon doesn't show up in the top right corner of the screen like it used to. When I try to start these applications, the item shows up in the tray, and there's an hourglass like it's loading, but it just goes away. I haven't noticed any pattern on what programs will run and what won't. Is there a way to save this system, or am I going to be stuck having to reinstall it from scratch again. I haven't had much luck with the support forums on the GhostBSD site, so I'm trying here before I nuke it. The GhostBSD install disk doesn't have any kind of a 'repair' tool that I can find, otherwise I'd just run that. Is there a way to save this system, or am I going to be stuck having to reinstall it from scratch again. If anyone can offer guidance on repairing the damage, I would really appreciate it. For background, the system is running on VMWare 6.0, has 2 CPUs, 8GB of memory, and 60GB of hard disk space. I mostly just use the system for web browsing, but I have installed LibreOffice, and some photo and video editing software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-13 22:01 As an update, here's a list of programs that will/won't launch, and some things I noticed when trying to run things: In Mate, I was going to browse to some logs to see if I could look at them, so I tried Places\\Computer, which gives this error message: Could not open location 'computer://'. When I double click the Computer icon on the desktop, I get: "Could not display 'computer:///' The file is of an unknown type." Places\\Network I get - Could not open location 'network://' operation not supported. When I try to launch the System Log application, it opens, but on the main page has this error (I've never run this program before, so this could be normal): Could not open the following files: /usr/local/etc/syslog.d: error when getting information no such file or directory /etc/syslogd: The file is not a regular file or is not a text file /var/log/debug.log: you don't have enough permissions to read the file var/log/cron: you don't have enough permissions to read the file /var/log/security: you don't have enough permissions to read the file /dev/console: you don't have enough permissions to read the file ​ These applications act like they're going to start, showing the program in the tray and the watch icon on the mouse pointer, but don't open, and the tray item disappears: Mate terminal, Rhythmbox, VLC Media Player, Firefox, Iridium browser, ktorrent, Thunderbird, Eye of Mate, ​ These applications open fine: Caja, dconfeditor, disk usage analyzer, log file viewer, Mate disk usage Analyzer, Mate System Monitor, Power Statistics, sound, LibreOffice apps, Mate dictionary, Transmission, Shotwell, Mate Colour Selection, Character map, Engrampa archive manager, Mate calculator, Mate Font Viewer, Plank ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-13 22:12 Since I noticed when gathering the list above that I can get into the Mate Log Viewer, I found a bunch of these on the applications that aren't starting: exited on signal 6 (core dumped) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mnbryant · 2020-07-13 22:41 Since it was in the middle of a package upgrade, try running `pkg upgrade -f` from a root console (Ctrl-Alt-F2 instead of logging in as user) and rebooting. This should force a redownload and reinstallation of every package installed on your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-14 00:34 Thank you! I thought that because this is in vsphere, I can't use CTRL-ALT and anything, as that kicks you out of console input and puts you back in the regular desktop you're connecting to it from. Since you gave me the command to run, I went out searching to see if there was a way, and for vmware you do CTRL-ALT-SPACE and then press your function key. That works! So, I am running the command now! Fingers crossed! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-14 00:52 So, the 858 packages downloaded and started extracting and installing, but it hung on 65. This is what it said on 65/858: (keep in mind that I'm hand typing all this below, so any spelling mistakes are my own) \[ 65/858\] Reinstalling dbus-1.12.20... ===> Creating groups Using existing group 'messagebus' ===> Creating users Using existing user 'messagebus'. \[ 65/858\] Extracting dbus-1.12.20: 100% \*Performing sanity check on apache24 configuration: AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using ::1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message Syntax OK \*Performing a graceful restart AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using ::1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message httpd not running, trying to start \*WARNING: you are stopping a boot service ​ After that, nothing. I'm going to leave it here for a while and see what happens. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-14 01:57 I decided to CTRL-C on it. I found that there was a hung process, got the PID that was holding the lock and killed it. I repeated the command, and it got past 65 and is still running. We'll see what happens. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- system-user · 2020-07-14 01:58 Would need a lot more info to help solve the issue but it sounds like an issue I ran into previously. Basically, the GUI configs for the user permissions were messed up by the update, leading to errors like you've described. I resolved it by logging in as root on the console without starting the GUI, issued a tar backup of my personal user account home directory, then deleted the user and its home dir and recreated it with regular cli commands. Then rebooted into the GUI and was back to normal. At that point I grabbed the minimum files required from the backup (documents and so forth) and put them into place where they used to be; but skipped any app or x server related dot files. Next time issue a zfs snapshot before running updates, and you can revert the changes more easily if something goes wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-14 02:13 That did the trick! After I killed the hung process, the pkg upgrade -f was able to run successfully. Afterward, I rebooted and all appears to be well. Thank you so much! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- reptarju · 2020-07-14 02:48 Not sure how ghostBSD handles everything; On Linux, the API/abi are kept between versions with additional feature sets. On freebsd, between major releases, the API/abi are changed to the point where applications won't be able to chooch. If your on zfs, look into bectl for boot environment snapshots. If an update stalls, recommend force reinstalling all packages (on kernel and userland updates) Edit: noting VMware, not sure on the hang issue ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mnbryant · 2020-07-14 06:02 No problem! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chrisvanderhaven · 2020-07-14 11:13 Thanks for your reply. I mentioned vmware because until yesterday after I posted the initial message, I didn't think I could issue CTRL- ALT-x commands on it, because vmware uses CTRL-ALT to exit the vm and go back to the desktop that your'e running the vmware console from. I started thinking about it, and it would make sense that they had to know that Linux/Unix uses CTRL-ALT-F1, etc. to do things, so I went out searching and found it.