Hello. I installed NomadBSD using 141R-20240711 x86_64 + zfs on a 64 GB USB key to be used on a x86_64 machine with NVIDIA GE-650 graphic card. It went well and smoothly for some months. Today I did the usual “pkg update” and got lot of troubles:
- the network does not start anymore. The ethernet link is seen as “Down”. I need to type “dhclient em0” to get networking running again
- Previously, SDDM started at boot into a nomadbsd session. Now it proposes two users (nomadbsd + another I added), except mouse and keyboard are unresponsive.
I looked into /var/log/X.0.log, /var/log/messages, … without detecting anything out of the ordinary. Any idea ?
TIA
Pascal
Hello Pascal,
NomadBSD is using quarterly repository. I have NOT updated my packages after 1. April.
When you did the pkg upgrade, you would have seen/noticed:
> sudo pkg upgrade
<snip>
Installed packages to be REMOVED:
evolution-data-server: 3.44.4_8
filezilla: 3.68.1
gnome-online-accounts: 3.44.0_3
libgdata: 0.18.1_1
libgepub: 0.6.0_5
pidgin: 2.14.13_1
thunar: 4.20.1
webkit2-gtk3: 2.34.6_10
wx32-gtk3: 3.2.6
xfce4-desktop: 4.20.0
xfce4-tumbler: 4.20.0
Number of packages to be removed: 11
The list might be longer depending on your installed programs.
So when you updated your packages, your removed/uninstalled essential packages at the same time!
You should always read and pay attention to the messages.
Every quarter when several hundred packages get changed, my workflow always include making a snapshot of the filesystem before upgrading, so I can roll back if something unintended happens…
So what are your options right now?
- Roll back to a known good snapshot of your system.
- Wait for the missing packages (and their dependencies) to compile successfully and get included in the quarterly repository - then install them again.
- Change repository to “latest” and install the missing packages.
- and the hardcore (for us NomadBSD-users): Compile from source
Here’s to a working NomadBSD 
Ludensen
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xfce4-desktop (and more) will be pulled, when e.g only Firefox is updated with OctoPkg. I did not see any hint that this (and a full update) will actually nearly kill NomadBSD. Symptoms: context-menu not possible, desktop changes,… mouse and keyboard are working on my end, though.
I had to roll back to latest snapshot (thanks to ZFS) 3 times… snapshots are listed with
zfs list -rt snapshot
Hope a new NomadBSD will be released asap…with a script to upgrade.
In the ‘newest’ build of quarterly the number of failed packages went down to 45 from 65.
Boy, I so hope, that I in the (near) future can help with problems in FreeBSD!!!
Snapshots are great!
but I should have written ‘boot environments’(BE) in my previous post…
The bectl command needs less parameters and works on a NomadBSD ZFS-disk:
> sudo bectl create [be-name]
> sudo bectl list
> sudo bectl activate [be-name]
and to free up space, when you’re absolutely sure the boot environment is not needed:
> sudo bectl destroy [be-name]
But zfs is more universal and the knowledge it requires is an advantage in many cases 
.
Please have a look at the last part of my post in this thread and why - in my world - an upgrade-script is NOT trivial…
Maybe you can help the small team accomplish this task..!?
Have a look at NomadBSDs GitHub-page.
The number of contributors - large and small - are 9 (nine)!!!
They surely wont mind a hand
(hopefully you’ll receive this last part as a tongue-in-cheek reaction - I’m also looking forward to the next release)
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So you made me run OctoPkg for the first time since forever - I prefer the CLI 
.
Huge package upgrades are ALWAYS a lot of reading package outputs (hence time consuming) and a pain!
(Leave out the reading and you will spend the same amount or greater of time seeking and correcting errors - choose your poison…)
When choosing ‘Install updates’, the window opening contains a list of ‘affected’ packages (and a nice option to create a ‘boot environment’!!! checked by default ).
The individual list-lines with package-names equals those from pkg.
With OctoPkg the list of packages is sorted alphabetically BUT not divided in the groups:
- removed
- (new) installed (dependencies)
- upgraded
- reinstalled
AND the ‘syntax’ of ‘(new) installed’ packages and ‘removed’ packages is the same! Meaning it is NOT possible to see (without extra research) if named package is being installed or removed…
You are the user of OctoPkg. So I would suggest you go to their GitHub-page > Issues and file a Feature request/bug report - depending on your temper
Hi ludensen,
Octopkg is just a simple GUI for pkg. Use what you like and what works for you.
I have now successfully ;( killed my NomadBSD, with pkg. Since all snapshots are exhausted, I will have to reinstall. (A LibQT…6.so was missing after rolling back to some snapshot, but I could not find the package with that .so to remove/reinstall it with pkg from cli, as qt was not working. Also the snapshot from the bsd-menu at startup did not help.
I am not really in a position to contribute bugs or anything. I just REALLY would like to use NomadBSD as my home-driver because I see the potential – this is going on since years now (starting with the nice TrueOS, which was abandoned unfortunately). But this is a certain setback.
I might not be the only one (and I am not really sure about the reason), so this is a warning.