My thoughts on Slackware, life and everything

Another big update in slackware-current

Fire in the hole! Damn the torpedoes.

With 281 new lines in the ChangeLog.txt, this update to slackware-currrent can be called a big one.

But the real interesting stuff is not just those sheer number of updated packages – it’s the new 4.1.6 Linux kernel, the gcc 4.9.3 compiler suite, glibc 2.22 C libraries, mesa 10.6.4,  a new libepoxy package which was required to get glamor 1.0.0 into the xorg-server… exciting times for the adventurous who are running slackware-current!

A note about mesa: it refuses to compile on 32-bit Slackware unless the ARCH is set to i586… gone is the i486 compatibility. Well, if you had watched the ChangeLog.txt these past months you’d already have noticed that updated packages  switched from i486 to i586, but that was voluntary. Mesa is the first real stumbling block.

I am in the process of upgrading my slackware64-current virtual machine and will compile new packages for the multilib gcc and glibc versions… you have to be patient a bit. You can of course go ahead and upgrade to the latest slackware-current, overwriting gcc and glibc with the official versions. All you lose is the ability to run 32-bit programs until my packages are ready. Should not take more than a day.

Pat also warned me about the upgrades to nettle and gnutls. They are likely to break many 3rd party packages because of the change in library version. Please report any broken package from my own repository, so that I can release rebuilt and fixed versions ASAP. Also, libelf was replaced with elfutils but a copy of libelf.so.0 was added to the aaa_elflibs package to keep the breakage to a minimum.

All this info is thanks to Pat who commented on this upgrade verbosely – it is background information MoZes needs for his slackwarearm, and important for my multilib.

Have fun! Eric

78 Comments

  1. p431i7o

    all point out that next version of slackware will be called 14.2

  2. David Spencer

    I spent six hours last night forcing SBo’s perf to build on -current’s 3.18.11, mostly because it wanted elfutils instead of libelf. Oh well, shit happens 😀

  3. Jack

    The only problem is that the x86_64 tree has a i586 mesa package!

  4. ponce

    yep, that’s an oversight, Jack.
    it should probably be fixed soon/
    in the meantime you can rebuild it yourself from the official sources or, if you feel brave, you can use this package I self-built for my vms (where I’m starting a global rebuild of my 3rd -party stuff)

    http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/tmp/mesa-10.6.4-x86_64-1ponce.txz

    now let’s dig into moving the SBo’s gnome stuff to the 3.16.x platform…

  5. fabio

    X won’t start, various libs (libGL.*.something) missing.
    cannot load library /usr/lib64/libkdeinit4_ksmserver.so message also present. Fresh install on a virtual machine.
    mirrors for -current double checked. commands issued since first boot:
    slackpkg upgrade slackpkg
    slackpkg install-new
    slackpkg upgrade-all
    slackpkg new-config
    slackpkg clean-system
    Thank you for your time and efforts.

  6. ponce

    fabio, please read the two posts above yours 😉

  7. ricky

    Hi, big update. Had a problem with mesa as someone else pointed out…. almost ended up reinstalling from scratch!

    One issue i noticed is for the steamclient:
    “Error: You are missing the following 32-bit libraries, and Steam may not run:
    libc.so.6”

  8. burdi01

    @ponce: Your mesa package works flawlessly.
    Thks, Dick

  9. noryungi

    Two things:

    1. Can we expect Slackware 15.0RC1 soon?

    2. Could you please tell Patrick V. to upgrade OpenSSH 7.0p1 to 7.1p1, since 7.0 contained a small config problem (related to root login)?

    As far as 2 is concerne, I expect this is on his to do list, but you never know…

  10. Ryan P.C. McQuen

    Thank you to Pat and Eric, cannot wait to test all the new goodies! ;^)

  11. Geremia

    Those with an Intel graphics card will need Ponce’s Intel driver, too:
    http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/tmp/xf86-video-intel-20150822_a6317fc-x86_64-2.txz

    in addition to his Mesa:
    http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/tmp/mesa-10.6.4-x86_64-1ponce.txz

  12. Augusto

    I just waiting for perl 5.23…
    kde5 will be very welcome too…

  13. walecha

    Agree with Geremia. Intel driver should be rebuilt with DRI3 support. Without it Xorg will crashed because it could not use SNA acceleration. I’m using hybridgpu system (Intel+AMD).

    Workaround for using non-DRI3 intel driver in hybridgpu is force intel to use old UXA acceleration via xorg.conf.

  14. ponce

    well, the right mesa package has already hit the mirrors, so there’s no need for rebuilding it or use the one I previously provided for commodity.

    if you have issues with the intel driver you have two choices:

    – go with the latest git, for which I provided some testing packages also for i586
    http://ponce.cc/slackware/testing/tmp/xf86-video-intel-20150822_a6317fc-i586-2.txz

    – patch the driver
    https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/xorg-problem-after-upgrade-in-current-x86_64-a-4175551401/page2.html#post5409756

    IMHO I prefer the first as I think the driver we have on current has gone a little behind the work going on in the kernel…

  15. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    I have Intel + NVidia GPU and i was stuck at terminal since startx won’t start normally.

    I had to boot into my 3.18.11 to get the desktop running up again. Perhaps i will try Ponce’s xf86-video-intel from git to test that.

  16. alienbob

    Augusto, KDE 5 (Plasma 5) will not be part of the next Slackware release. I can not make guesses about Perl, because that’s Pat’s call.

  17. Regnad Kcin

    I encountered the startx video problem and a trip to ponce’s fixed it pronto. I downloaded the xf86-video-intel-20150822_a6317fc-x86_64-2.txz package from the directory provided above, installed it with installpkg and lo it worketh.

  18. hitest

    Thanks for the intel package, ponce:)

  19. fabio

    Has someone solved the Amarok/phonon-gstreamer/mp3 files/ thing? Thanks @ponce for the mesa and intel driver.

  20. alienbob

    Try installing gst-plugins-ffmpeg to get mp3 working in Amarok.

  21. fabio

    Tried, did not solved. In stable gst-plugins-ugly gets the job done. But the SBo for them won’t build on -current. Thanks!

  22. ponce

    gst-plugins-ugly needs a patch to build on current

    http://cgit.ponce.cc/slackbuilds/patch/?id=fd2b885646f5f16106da59a3a04df89d368bd8ac

  23. Willy Sudiarto Raharjo

    The xf86-video-intel dri version works for me in my workstation. Will try it later for my laptop.

    Big Thanks Ponce

  24. alienbob

    Yes I do hope that Pat adopts this build with DRI.

  25. Phil

    Calibre seems to be broken following the updates. This is what I get when started from the command line:

    libGL error: No matching fbConfigs or visuals found
    libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast
    Unrecognized OpenGL version
    Unrecognized OpenGL version

  26. LoneStar

    @alienbob

    hi Eric, do you see any need of recompile for your latest KDE5 packages after this batch of updates? or it works flawlessly?

  27. alienbob

    LoneStar, you tell me!
    I have not updated my laptop with Plasma 5 to the latest Slackware-current, so I can not tell if anything is broken. I am compiling the next set of Plasma 5 packages and then I am going to upgrade to the latest -current.

  28. alienbob

    Phil, what mesa package do you have on your computer?
    The 64-bit repository had a 32-bit mesa package initially, and that was fixed the day after.
    Having the wrong mesa package installed can lead to all kinds of OpenGL errors.

  29. Owen Greaves

    I did an install of your July Plasma 5 packages on the latest current, still having the problem with the task bar and other desktop decorations, but the SHIFT + ALT + F12 solves the problem : ) That’s all I’ve found broken so far – when will you release August, or are you waiting for something deeper like 5.4 : )

  30. Paul Lutt

    Phil, looks like tigervnc package needs to be compiled against the new gnutls library.

    Thanks for your consistent attention to detail and amazing support.

    -paul

  31. alienbob

    Paul, I think you are right, I will recompile tigervnc for slackware-current.

  32. alienbob

    Owen, the next batch of updates, in particular Plasma 5.4.0 and Applications 15.08.0, are proving to be hard nuts to crack. I have spent several days on figuring out the build order for the many new packages (KDEPIM finally migrated from kdelibs 4 to Frameworks 5), and updating the framework for these new KDE packages as well as several new dependencies.
    I have no idea if I have something working in August. In the meantime I hope that not too much was broken as a result of the slackware-current updates since I do not have lots of room (read: spare time) for investigations and recompilations.

  33. Owen Greaves

    Hey Eric, No worries, was curious if you had any luck with newer packages – I’m liking what I hear and see with KDE 5 – it’s fun tinkering with it….I’m just not all that savy with making packages like you are : ) Someday I’ll learn, or at least get better at this thing called Linux : ) I appreciate your work, and all that you do for the Slackware Community, Thank you.

  34. János

    Not sure if this is the right place to report it, but here it is: I have just upgraded an x86 current; LibreOffice (5) fails to start – throws error: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: error while loading shared libraries: libicuuc.so.51: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    ldd /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin says:

    libicudata.so.54 => /usr/lib/libicudata.so.54 (0xb1e85000)
    libicui18n.so.51 => not found
    libicui18n.so.54 => /usr/lib/libicui18n.so.54 (0xb381e000)
    libicuuc.so.51 => not found
    libicuuc.so.54 => /usr/lib/libicuuc.so.54 (0xb36b0000)

    Haven’t (yet) tried x86_64 current.

  35. miguel guendulain

    I install multilib for 32 bits .. if I do the update ,,I need to reinstall the multilib again .. I am planning to install virtualbox

  36. alienbob

    Hi Miguel

    If you blacklist my multilib packages then slackpkg will not overwrite the gcc and glibc packages with those from Slackware. You need to keep up to date with multilib just as you do with the regular Slackware.
    If you install the slackpkg+ extension for slackpkg, this maintenance will be a lot easier, but even manually it is not much trouble.
    Remember that if Slackware has updates to mesa and/or xorg-server, you need to re-install your Nvidia or Ati binary video driver if you use that. And if you have multilib, you must install both the 64-bit and the 32-bit libraries of that Nvidia/Ati driver.

  37. alienbob

    János – where did you get that LibreOffice package? What is its exact package name in /var/log/packages/ ? If its mine I need to investigate.

  38. János

    Eric, I’m an idiot; I was under the impression that LibreOffice had been updated to version 5, but it was still 4.4.5 in fact.
    But the package was listed as belonging to alienbob when I issued the „slackpkg remove libreoffice” command.
    Anyway, I now have actually installed LibreOffice 5 and all is OK.
    Sorry for the false report.

  39. alienbob

    No problem János – glad you were able to sort it all out.

  40. carlos moura

    Hello .VLC media player 2.2.1 Terry Pratchett does not work after this system upgrade (perhaps this is not the cause) .More someone with this problem or am I asking in the wrong place? The player starts but freezes quickly when opening a video .. .

  41. alienbob

    Hi carlos,

    Do you see any errors when running the following command:

    $ vlc -vvv –list 1>/dev/null

    This usually shows any library loading issues in the plugins.
    The freeze can either be a problem with VLC (library linking issues) or you forgot to upgrade /install one or more packages.

  42. carlos moura

    Hello Eric, we noticed these errors in the output of command suggested, I tried to link these to the version available here (libgnutls.so.30) but started giving errors then stopped to study the best direction to be taken:[09d6faf0] core libvlc warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/plugins/access/libvnc_plugin.so’ (libgnutls.so.28: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
    [09d6faf0] core libvlc warning: cannot load module `/usr/lib/vlc/plugins/misc/libgnutls_plugin.so’ (libgnutls.so.28: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)

  43. alienbob

    Hi carlos, that output shows that the VLC package needs a recompilation due to the upgrade of gnutos in slackware-current.

  44. carlos moura

    Thank you Eric for now I shall be without VLC Player, I have no idea how to build this but try to learn

  45. Regnad Kcin

    Some fellow who uses the pseudonym “Eric Hameleers” has some info on building VLC at this location: https://wiki.videolan.org/Slackware

  46. carlos moura

    I downloaded the vlc.SlackBuild with all dependencies and made as described but the error remains, I do not know how to correct or change the version of this dependence on the compilation

  47. carlos moura

    I tried other versions of VLC-player also without success

  48. Arthur

    Hello Erik,
    One doubt about Slackware-current and your VLC package. Now We have the libva into Slackware Packages, version 1.6.
    Your VLC package is compiled using libva 1.2.1. Can I use VLC with Slackware-current, even if the versions of libva don’t match?

  49. alienbob

    Arthur, as you could read in the comments before yours, the VLC package currently does not work on -current, because of other library upgrades. The package needs to be recompiled. The difference in version numbers of the libva libraries should not matter.

  50. charlie

    I’m running -current with Plasma5, the latest updates and ponce’s intel driver. VLC is working fine here.

  51. ponce

    you shouldn’t need my intel driver anymore: it has been updated in current two days ago so just sync to that.

  52. Regnad Kcin

    I was having trouble with LibreOffice 5 before this recent -current upgrade. Now I have reinstalled it and it works great.

  53. alienbob

    Regnad, thanks for the update. So I do not have to recompile it… saves two days.

  54. Regnad Kcin

    A.B.- VLC works for me but I see that others have reported problems. All the multilib stuff works fine. Some stuff I had to reinstall. This new version of Slackware is fast and smooth.

  55. carlos moura

    Eric thanks for the last packet, VLC is great and chromiun too. Thank you teacher

  56. alienbob

    New VLC packages have indeed been uploaded – recompiled for slackware-current and with some updated internal libraries as well.
    I also fixed the 32bit tigervnc package for slackware-current in my own repository (the tigervnc in Slackware itself is broken and no ETA for a fix). I had uploaded the wrong package.

    Anything else I need to recompile?
    The new KDE 5 is progressing, no idea if I am ready with it before September 1st though… lots of stumbling blocks still to overcome. Not all packages compile.

  57. Lasieab

    Hi Eric,

    Having some issues with libreoffice 5. Initially required libgnutls.so.28, so I:

    sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libgnutls.so /usr/lib64/libgnutls.so.28

    now I get:

    /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: /usr/lib64/libgnutls.so.28: version `GNUTLS_3_0_0′ not found (required by /usr/lib64/libcups.so.2)
    /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/soffice.bin: /usr/lib64/libgnutls.so.28: version `GNUTLS_1_4′ not found (required by /usr/lib64/libcups.so.2)

    Please help, thanks.

  58. Lasieab

    Hi Eric

    No worries, sorted.

  59. Drakeo

    This has pretty much broke everything I have for my custom third part builds. now mater what I do recompile everything from a fresh install SimpleScreenRecorder still calls on the old nettle. This is on a fresh install. libhogweed.so.2 is the output. that is from old nettle. by leaving the said libelf.so.0
    this may actually cause more problems.
    Oh well another day looking at the slackblob.

  60. Drakeo

    found the problem Eric I had a copy of your old ffmpeg
    I rebuilt ffmpeg from slackbuilds and that fixed the problem.
    looks like you have a ton of compiling ahead of you.

  61. alienbob

    OK so ffmpeg gets on the RECOMPILE list as well 😉

  62. me

    multilib still has libelf-compat32 instead of elfutils-compat32.

  63. me

    sorry seems like my bad.

  64. FredM

    I’m probably alittle bit late here, but since I upgraded, I’m stuck with qemu-kvm that needs libgnutls.so.28.
    I tried to recompile it with the Slackbuild from Eric’s site, but it won’t link:
    ld: qemu-timer.o: undefined reference to symbol ‘timer_settime@@GLIBC_2.3.3’
    Any help welcomed 🙂
    Thanks

  65. FredM

    Little update: I used source and slackbuild from SlackBuilds.org: it compiled and it works.
    I had to tweak my startup scripts (originally from Eric’s great wiki page on qemu) adding a “-enable-kvm” option and replacing “-hda pathtofile” by the new “-drive file=pathtofile,format=raw” option.
    Cheers!

  66. Alex

    Dude, updating alot of CRAP apps doesnt mean BIG UPDATE!

    Try to fix and improve core Slackware and Installer!

  67. alienbob

    Dude, get the fuck out of here. Your blabbering does not add anything. Improve what?
    What I do here is not related to the Slackware core and installer. My work with Plasma 5 is looking ahead while Pat deals with the core.

    Now go back to your PC and install Ubuntu. Your next posts will be blacklisted.

  68. carlos moura

    Hello everyone. I have a doubt for some time : is there any place where I can download older versions of .txz packages for slackware in case of a downgrade, install a kernel or any previous file for example or the files become inaccessible after an update ? I have several images in format iso been saved yet but would like to know about it because on other occasions I’ve been looking for and have found nothing ( my deduction is that it would be difficult to keep all of everything that has been updated by great the server

  69. alienbob

    Hi carlos.

    No, there is no such place for slackware-current. Once a package gets updated the older package disappears from the Internet. If you need older versions then you need to store a copy of them locally after you installed them.

  70. carlos moura

    Thank you Eric, maybe I was not clear, I asked out of simple curiosity to any experience with older versions .All know that current is what the word says but I meant any version. Thanks for clearing this doubt, I’m learning a lot watching his work

  71. alienbob

    carlos, you were talking about the stable Slackware releases as well?
    After any stable release, no package is removed from it.
    Packages get replaced by putting a patched or bugfixed version in the ./patches/packages/ directory but the original package stays where it was.
    If a *newer* version of an already patched package gets released, then indeed the older version of the patched package disappears. But the original version in the stable release remains of course.

  72. carlos moura

    Okay, I’m still starting at slackware, debian abandoned after the imposition of systemd as default boot loader (or standard of all things)

  73. Stephan

    Hi Eric and everybody else. Uhh what I read about some issues with this upgrade of Slackware current does make me reluctant to upgrade my Slackware current machine. Since I had some issues earlier which took me a long time (the last big changelog in Slackware current) to get my machine running again I wanted to ask if it is now safe to upgrade my machine. Will it at least boot without an issue after the upgrade? Last but not least thanks to everybody with your help provided here 🙂 !

  74. Regnad Kcin

    In my opinion this recent upgrade has been quite useful and a real improvement to the function of my system. There were some issues but they were dealt with rather easily and smoothly.

  75. alienbob

    That is the main purpose of -current: to have people testing the new packages and report their bugs. IT is how we can work toward a stable release without nasty surprises.
    Those who are running slackware-current can be confronted with unfortunate breakage… but they are rewarded with bleeding edge (or at least: very contemporary) software, and a mention in the ChangeLog.txt if they actually report the solution for a bug.
    Running slackware-current on a machine you need for your daily work, is living dangerously. BE prepared to reserve some extra time to fix your computer so that you can work again. But for geeks that should be a welcome challenge, not a nuisance.

  76. Stephan

    Hello again. Eventually I did the upgrade and it was smooth. Slackware booted straight into KDE 4.14.6. I had some minor issues with the broadcom wlan. I resolved it with github: https://github.com/Thorn-Inurcide/SlackBuilds/tree/master/SlackBuilds/broadcom-sta
    Thanks for the hints in this thread 🙂

  77. Ed

    Anyone notice that the new libgnutls.so.30 breaks Libreoffice 4 & 5. Libreoffice is looking for libgnutls.so.28.

  78. alienbob

    Ed, that is weird. I explicitly compile Libreoffice against openssl. I wonder what drags libgnutls in as a dependency.

    However, my libreoffice-5.0.2 package links against libgnutls.so.30 – not .28. What package are you using?
    My LibreOffice 4.4.5 package is compiled on Slackware 14.1 so I could understand that that version has issues on slackware-current now.

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