4 More days...

[Scott (angrykeyboarder)]

Matthew Garrett spake thusly:
> With the exception of the Thunderbird and timidity issues (and I can't 
> reproduce the timidity one here at all), every bug you've responded to 
> in gutsy appears to be down to your issue with Hal. And, judging by the 
> log there, your system was entirely broken:
> 
> 03:13:09.373 [W] ids.c:294: Couldn't stat pci.ids file 
> '/usr/share/misc/pci.ids', errno=13: Permission denied
> 03:13:09.373 [W] ids.c:515: Couldn't stat usb.ids file 
> '/usr/share/misc/usb.ids', errno=13: Permission denied
> 03:13:09.373 [E] osspec.c:310: Unable to inotify_add_watch() for 
> '/usr/share/hal/fdi/preprobe': Permission denied
> 
> indicates either filesystem corruption or that something has heavily 
> screwed with the permissions. It certainly doesn't look anything like a 
> hal bug. What are you actually complaining about?

I'm a lowly user who only knows somewhat more than the average Joe, but
is pretty much in the dark about a lot of this stuff. In fact, I can
read descriptions of programs like hal and dbus and still not fully
grasp their purpose.

Bearing that in mind, there are plenty out there who know a fraction of
what I do. They are the ones Ubuntu is catering to by all the (very nice
and convenient I might add) apps that give little reason for new users
to ever open a terminal.

But I digress....

All of this stuff you quoted from my report is utter gibberish to me. I
do understand "permission denied" and found that quite odd and that
alone told me that something wasn't right.

I had no way of knowing what the problem was other than it seemed
related to HAL because only when attempting to upgrade to a new version
of HAL did that problem rear it's head.

If it was a filesystem corruption or messed up permissions, then it only
seemed to be affecting the installation of HAL.

You know how many updates there are on a given day. Well virtually all
of them went without a hitch (they now number in the hundreds I'm sure).
 The ones that didn't were generally due to a conflict in a package that
shared the same file with other (something I've noticed in a number of
KDE apps from time to time over the past few years).  There are easy
workarounds for those (although I wouldn't have known that a few years ago).

So up until your response here I had no reason to believe it was
anything but a corrupt installation of HAL. And the only thing that
could have caused that based on my own behavior is a corrupt package or
packages or maybe a broken install or corrupt download or something
similar.  I had no way of knowing if the problem was on your end, my end
or en route...

Now...

I thank you for the helpful information you have given me today but I
have to ask...  Why (as of this writing) is this not mentioned in the
bug itself?  Wouldn't that have been the place it should have gone to
begin with?

Since you're a developer and you took a look at my bug and came to that
conclusion, why not add that information to the bug rather than here?

This is one example of how poor communication with regard to bug reports
can be a big cause of frustration.

And the bug in question was only "bolstered" by the "me too" comments
that followed. As well as a very similar bug I happened upon earlier
today when I was browsing HAL-related bugs.

>From all appearances (as of this writing) that bug report is STILL
"undecided".  Isn't that a tad odd?

As far as the Thunderbird issue was concerned, I know it's minor in the
scheme of things and therefore the bug will probably be in the same
state 3 months from now as it is today...

Frustrating? Yes. Important in the big scheme of things? No, not really,
but it was sort of like throwing gasoline on a (my) fire at this point.

As luck would have it, Feisty missed the cutoff for Thunderbird 2.0 by a
matter of a few weeks, so I'd been looking forward to using Ubuntu's
version once again (I used Mozilla's instead - why wait 5 months when
you don't have to).

So it looks like I'll be back to square one there.  Again, minor in the
big scheme of things, but not to this user.

Oh and as far as timidity, goes - definitely minor. I barely remember
even filing the bug.  I do try to help out when I can by filling bugs
though so that's why it was there.  At the time it was a problem.  I've
not even reinstalled it when I did a clean install recently.

There are several other annoying bugs out there that I've just not had
the time or patience to file (or add to). But they are more fuel to the
fire.

And why would Ubuntu or Kubuntu include a default install of a desktop
search application that seems to do more harm that good?  I've yet to
hear anybody sing the praises of Beagle/Kerry (or strigi as is now the
case of Kubuntu - they went from one bad one to another).

But I'll save that for comments on what I'm sure are existing (but
probably "undecided" bugs as we only have a few days to go).

*sigh*



-- 
            Scott
http://angrykeyboarder.com
I've never used an OS I didn't (dis)like.
©2007 angrykeyboarder™ & Elmer Fudd. All Wites Wesewved