[EN] "Upgrade Warnings" bloated

[vilde]

As usual I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but anyway....

The last couple of months and maybe longer, there have been very lot of topics in "Upgrade Warnings". Maybe sid and sid with multiarch is more "unstable" than before or is there to much dialogs about small things that is not really upgrade-warnings?

As I'm used to and as it has been for a long time you shall not do a d-u (or be very careful) if there is a real upgrade warning not solved, but now there are new "warnings" every day and most of them will never be marked "solved". In my opinion it has become some sort of decrease of the value in the "Upgrade Warnings"

It's not really working to follow all the discussions in "Upgrade Warnings" for everybody and I don't even understand a lot of them. So what I do now is skipping the "Upgrade Warnings" and do a d-u -f and if apt don't complain I do the d-u, if apt complains I try to see if there is some topic in "Upgrade Warnings" that looks like my problem, often it's not, then I just wait for some hours or days until apt don't complain any more.

To much warnings will make warnings less important..............

Maybe there should be a "Developer Upgrade Warning" or similar, where important things like "Now xxxx is broken, don't upgrade until this is solved" will be written, and this will be marked solved when it is solved?

It would be interesting to see if there is someone else who has an opinion about this?

[rueX]

well ... i think a prob could be posted in the departement:
software or hardware or network or graphic or drives,usb (like kanotix times or so) ... see siduction forum.

Second : the admins could or should decide, if it is depending on d-u or "standard-probs"

mmmh, not easy to handle . . . in those days, devil is looking for his pictures   

[melmarker]

and i think - we should change nothing, because there is no reason to do so. if someone will stand up and manage it to move not helpfull upgrade warnings to better locations, we will not stand in the way

[ayla]

Hi,

in general I'm going with vilde, upgrade warnings seems a little overboarding sometimes to me too.
 
Often it's not really easy -even for a long time user- to decide whether something is to be posted as an upgrade warning or would be better placed in e.g. "software" or some other place. Also it's not easy to decide for the average user whether a warning is to take really serious or just informational.

Maybe we could give some criteria to the users e.g. "Is a single package broken, if yes, is it wideley used and essential for important funktions or ist it just a case where something one likes is not working as usual." or "Will the network stop working if d-u is carried out?", "Will the whole system break -eventually not obvious on apt's output?" tbc...

If then one decides to put a question in e.g. "software" insteed of "upgrade warnings" and another one thinks "ups, that's far more important then the initially poster had thought" one can apply a post with a link in upgrade-warnings, eventually with a rate like "just watch carefully what apt does on this special case", "important", "breaks..." ...

This has a downside of course: A really important warning may hang around somewhere else for a while until it reaches the "warnings"...

I think especially "upgrade warnings" should generally be handled with care from our users so the workload for our dev's may not increase.

greets
ayla

[dibl]

What vilde has written is true.  It looks like some of the posts are from new sid users who don't completely understand "normal" when using sid.  In general, it's a good thing if siduction is attracting new sid users, IMHO.  More users = more test cases = more feedback for Debian devs.


There is another way to look at this situation.  If all "concern" posts are concentrated in "Upgrade Warnings", then there is only one forum to review.  If we enforce a more rigorous segregation of topics, we would only discourage people from posting anything, since no one wants to be "wrong" about the category for their issue.  I would rather see moderators move posts that are really only about some single-package software issue, like flashplugin-nonfree needs an update, or something like that.

[bluelupo]

@dibl: In my opinion there is nothing wrong to postpone the moderators here in the forum the posts or warnings in the "right" subforum. So you could better distinguish between Problmen at individual software packages currently unresolvable package dependencies that might mean a bigger problem.

[michaa7]

I myself posted today about an issue I wasn't sure it qualifies for being posted here. But the point is: I knew it didn't fit not until I got further info from someone else in the forum.
And I am one who heavily posts about new flash versions and I think it is a good idea to post it here, because I think apart from being the subforum for upgrade warnings it is the one place everybody reads and searches for things which might damage an installation or exposing the system to security risks by ommitting something during d-u or maintance in general.

OTOH, yes, there are topics not really belonging there. So everybody should ask himself in a self-critical manner whether or not a topic fits there. I think news about flash fit, although it is not a warning but a hint.

I think the update-warning subforum is the one that matters for all maintance related *news*, the rest is for all other kind of stuff. Reducing it only to topics dealing really about upgrade breakage would create more hassel due to less general overview.

[dibl]

I think news about flash fit, although it is not a warning but a hint.

Heh -- we (i.e. melmarker) could simply change the title:  "Upgrade & Security Warnings".  Then the security topics fit in nicely.     

[melmarker]

right - but that should not be ness. - security warnings or advices are no bloat imho

and another thought - better one warning more (and maybe not that important) than less - the not written warning could be the important one ...

[dibl]

... better one warning more (and maybe not that important) than less - the not written warning could be the important one ...

+1

[vilde]

Ok, interesting to see that I was not alone with my thoughts and I agree about most of whats written here but I don't fully agree with this...

...............and another thought - better one warning more (and maybe not that important) than less - the not written warning could be the important one ...

because if to many shout warning to often the real serious warning will not be noticed, there need to be a balance.

Sometimes there come a warning like this

[/size]After upgrading to systemd 204-11 in todays dist-upgrade your system will refuse to boot, because initrd messes up. your error will be something like [/color]

ALERT! /dev/disk/by_uuid/ does not exist. Dropping to a shell

If you run into this, run

Code: [Select]

udevadm trigger and hit CTL-D when done to fix it. There is a bugreport greetzdevil

and I would like this sort of warning be marked in some way to distinguish it from the usual " during d-u this and that happened or not". Maybe a hard warning similar to above can be made sticky until solved?

[melmarker]

hmm, vilde - i think if you wanted this job done you must stand up and become moderator

[piper]

As usual I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but anyway....

The last couple of months and maybe longer, there have been very lot of topics in "Upgrade Warnings". Maybe sid and sid with multiarch is more "unstable" than before or is there to much dialogs about small things that is not really upgrade-warnings?

As I'm used to and as it has been for a long time you shall not do a d-u (or be very careful) if there is a real upgrade warning not solved, but now there are new "warnings" every day and most of them will never be marked "solved". In my opinion it has become some sort of decrease of the value in the "Upgrade Warnings"

It's not really working to follow all the discussions in "Upgrade Warnings" for everybody and I don't even understand a lot of them. So what I do now is skipping the "Upgrade Warnings" and do a d-u -f and if apt don't complain I do the d-u, if apt complains I try to see if there is some topic in "Upgrade Warnings" that looks like my problem, often it's not, then I just wait for some hours or days until apt don't complain any more.

To much warnings will make warnings less important..............

Maybe there should be a "Developer Upgrade Warning" or similar, where important things like "Now xxxx is broken, don't upgrade until this is solved" will be written, and this will be marked solved when it is solved?

It would be interesting to see if there is someone else who has an opinion about this?

Not everyone here runs the same applications, so that said, a warning not posted may not mess your system for a few hours/days/etc... but messes another persons, because the app uses a dependency that wants to be removed, because someone posted about it, it can be avoided.

Something that is a "decrease of the value" to you,  can tremendously be of incredible value to someone else.

Not everyone here runs siduction, a lot of people run sid, testing, and even experimental, I know people from other debian  based distros that come here just for the warnings page and/or other information.

I do post warnings for multiarch that effects my system in general, why ?, chances are someone else uses wine, steam, mythtv, etc ... and can break/dependency problem/libs for both 32/64/ etc .. a system, while someone else without multiarch  has no problems.

The way I look at it is  every little bit helps, now, if you frequent this board a lot, you read the warnings, fracked your system, shit happens, your problem full stop.

What if the warnings not there, someone fracks the system, who gets the blame ?  hmm, things get interesting

I say the user for not reading what apt says, but, others will disagree




I will probably be the only one that disagrees with this thread, but, thats what opinions are for and thats my 2¢



 

[vilde]

hmm, vilde - i think if you wanted this job done you must stand up and become moderator

@ melmarker, That's a very common type of answer here. I understand that you are a limited amount of people working with this probably on your free time for no pay. But to answer like that when someone has a suggestion is like saying "don't come here and want anything at all, we don't have time, that's not important to us" Probably it is like that but why shall anybody make a suggestion, why shall we have a "Ideas and Improvements then"? For me it feels somewhat rude to answer like that. I didn't came with a demand, it was a suggestion to discuss about. And my answer to you melmarker is that I have no possibility, I'm not able to make any commitments to do any kind of regular work here on siduction or anywhere else. If anybody want to know why?, I will not tell you.

Don't understand me wrong, I really appriciate all work being done here by everybody who develops, moderates or whatever, and I have written that before, but I'm not i a very good mood for the moment and I feel bad being answered like that.

[melmarker]

@vilde - this is the reality in foss - if you like a job done, that is not so important for anyone - do it yourself. And this is not rude, just reality. And guess, why no one stand up and do this job like you think it has to be done: Right - It is not so important for other users to spend their time to make you feel comfortable in this special case. As you see - your suggestion is discussed, my opinion is clear about this subject, others have their opinions too.

If you think this is rude - it isn't. Maybe my answer sounds like, but english isn't my mothers tongue. To be really nice i had to write this text in german - but i'm afraid that if i do so, some people could see this as rude behavior, because they don't speak german. Catch 22.