Gnome Update to 3.34?

[DaveHighland]

Are Gnome updates managed through Application Installer or yum?

I've been having trouble with Gnome classic causing crashes randomly a minute or so after unlocking the screen following "unsuspending" by pressing the power button. Web research showed that other users had this problem on various distros, not just Centos 7, and that it had been traced to a bug in gdm that accessed a null pointer. At least two articles said this problem had been fixed and gave the gnome version number in which it was fixed.

So I went to Settings/Details/About and found that my version of Gnome (3.28.2) predates the bug fix. I thought I was getting somewhere. Then a little button labeled "Check for Updates" on the About screen caught my eye. So I pushed it. Application Installer launched and told me that an update to "Gnome Application Platform Version 3.34" is available, with a button labeled "Update".

I did not press the Update button. Instead, I opened a terminal window and ran "yum clean all" followed by "sudo yum update", with the following results:

[Dave@localhost ~]$ yum clean all
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, remove-with-leaves
Cleaning repos: adobe-linux-x86_64 base elrepo epel extras nux-dextop opera playonlinux updates
Other repos take up 157 M of disk space (use --verbose for details)
[Dave@localhost ~]$ sudo yum update
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks, remove-with-leaves
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: centos-distro.cavecreek.net
* elrepo: repos.lax-noc.com
* epel: mirror.arizona.edu
* extras: centos-distro.cavecreek.net
* nux-dextop: mirror.li.nux.ro
* updates: mirror.arizona.edu
No packages marked for update
[Dave@localhost ~]$


So why is it that Application Installer knows about an available Gnome Update, but yum does not? I have always used yum for all installs and updates. If yum doesn't think Gnome needs updating, is it safe to press that Update button on Application Installer? Are my yum repositories misconfigured? Do I need to add a repository for Gnome updates, and if so, which one?

[TrevorH]

I think the fact that it looks direct at the gnome update site is a bug that needs to be reported to RH.

To get your bug fixed you'll need to report it on bugzilla.redhat.com too. Point at the bug entry and see if you can get them to backport that fix to the version in use RHEL 7.

[DaveHighland]

Thanks, Trevor.

Just to be clear: Are you confirming that it is NOT safe to update Gnome by clicking on the Update button in Application Installer?

Dave

[TrevorH]

It's probably safe because I doubt if it will work. But not something I want to test on other than a disposable VM. We ship gnome 3.28 as part of CentOS 7 so if it did work, then next time there was an updated gnome package came down the line from RHEL, it would overwrite the files that had been updated outside the packaging system and you'd end up with a frankenmonster. Even CentOS 8 has the same gnome version (at least for now).

[bonedome]

Have you installed a/some flatpak app/s at some point ?
The update is for flatpak
If I run

Code: Select all

flatpak list

I get

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org.gnome.Platform/x86_64/3.34

along with others
It's totally safe to run

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flatpak update

which does the same as the update button
If you have uninstalled a flatpak app, you can uninstall the runtime with

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flatpak uninstall --unused