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List:       gentoo-user
Subject:    Re: [gentoo-user] downgrading gcc
From:       Dale <rdalek1967 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-04-20 8:01:22
Message-ID: 49EC2BD2.7060805 () gmail ! com
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Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
> It's more likely a compatibility issue between very specific modules or bits 
> of code that affect lots of systems. Take for example this elog from the 
> nvidia drivers:
>
> ===
> This ebuild installs a kernel module and X driver. Both must
> match explicitly in their version. This means, if you restart
> X, you most modprobe -r nvidia before starting it back up
> ===
>
> The interfaces that these things use have never been guaranteed to be stable, 
> and gcc itself is free (within reason) to lay things out in memory anyway it 
> sees fit. You get the same thing with X and it's drivers too. It makes sense - 
> a server and it's drivers should all be part of the same release series and be 
> built together with the same toolchain for best results.
>
> You DON'T get this problem with normal packages. You can upgrade and downgrade 
> cairo all day long if you want and firefox won't care - the API it uses is 
> stable and doesn't change.
>
> In your case and Mark's, you tried to downgrade something critical but have no 
> information about what you should be downgrading to. When you synced portage, 
> you lost the information about what was the latest arch and ~arch versions. 
> Upgrade is easy - "emerge latest <arch> for everything, we know it works", but 
> portage doesn't offer a rollback function so downgrade is much harder. Once 
> someone has figured out $LIST, you can "emerge $LIST" and life is good, but 
> you don't have $LIST yet.
>
> Logic tells me you had two problems, and gcc is neither of them. Your box does 
> not like latest X for whatever reason (problem 1) but you can't rollback to 
> the last working version of everything involved as you don't know what it is 
> (problem 2).
>
> So when all other efforts have failed, downgrade gcc and rebuild everything is 
> very likely to fix those problems.
>
>   

While I'm not a dev, I do know this.  All I did was downgrade gcc and a
emerge -e world.  After that, things started working again.  X wasn't
crashing, Seamonkey wasn't crashing, my USB ports starting working
again, my sound started working again and several other little things
that were "weird".  So far, I haven't changed any config files or any
versions of a package.  I haven't syncd the tree on this machine
either.  I didn't want to complicate things any farther with portage
wanting to upgrade something else when I'm trying to get back to a
stable system, 

The thing to notice is this, nothing changed but gcc.  That's all.  It
is odd to me that when I upgraded gcc, things started to break.  When I
downgrade gcc, things start to work again.  Since nothing else changed,
in my mind, it has to be gcc.  I may be wrong but the fact it works is
undeniable.  I'm all for what works.

Dale

:-)  :-)


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