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Ubuntu had same problem in 2006

Posted Dec 12, 2008 18:06 UTC (Fri) by dwheeler (guest, #1216)
Parent article: Instructions from Fedora on fixing the dbus problem

Ubuntu had the same problem with updates in 2006. In that, an X-windows update botch caused X to fail, requiring people to run the update from the terminal (and many didn't know how to do that). Microsoft has had update problems too (see same article).

Fedora has a lot of company :-).

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Dec 12, 2008 18:12 UTC (Fri) by thyrsus (subscriber, #21004) [Link]

Even the terminal update was failing for several hours yesterday: several mirror sites were missing mandatory dependencies. I manually forced my system to look at other mirrors by editing the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo; this was definitely not a "consumer-grade" update.

'Safe mode' needed?

Posted Dec 13, 2008 13:35 UTC (Sat) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Perhaps as a precaution distributions should include a 'safe boot' option that loads a basic kernel, with just enough hardware support for network and disk access, and brings up the system in text mode letting the user install updates. Of course this is already possible with any Linux system, but we are seeing less technically capable users who don't understand boot parameters or how to use the shell. They would benefit from a minimal but still friendly interface that installs updates and reboots.

Ideally, this safe mode boot would never be needed.

'Safe mode' needed?

Posted Dec 13, 2008 19:44 UTC (Sat) by engla (guest, #47454) [Link]

There is no perfect system, there will always be complex enough computer programs that they will need human input especially when something goes wrong. In this case, linux distributions should have a stronger, more coherent and more definitive way to go wrong and tell the user about it!

So if d-bus, X, or something else is missing, tell the user and give it the control., Recommending upgrading the system in such cases is not a bad idea (since that's how large-scale breakages are fixed).