Cannot install any RPMs

pickarooney

I've got a fresh install of Mandrake 9.0 and I cannot manage to install any useful RPMs.
An example : XMMS crossfader, I downloaded an RPM called xmms-crossfade-0.3.2-fr1.i386.rpm

Try to install the thing and I get an error saying I'm missing a dependency lib.so.6 (GLIBC_2.3). I can't find lib.so.6 using rpmfind or anything.
I suppose I need glib version 2.3 but the last time I tried to install that (for xmule) I ended up with one missing dependency after another, to about 10 levels of dependency, until I eventually ended up with two conflicting versions of glibc, neither of which I could use or delete. I dont' really want this to happen again. I find it rather weird that Mandrake 9 doesn't come with this pre-installed (it's got 2.2.5).

Is there any simple way of upgrading to glibc 2.3 without having to go around in circles looking for dependencies for dependencies etc. A big old rpm with all the necessary dependencies is what I'm looking for.

I know it's not meant to be simple, but it shouldn't be this complicated either, surely?

niallb

Hi pickarooney,
if you're using Mandrake, you might use urpmi
rather than just rpm to help you with dependencies.

If you installed from CD, running
urpmi xmms-crossfader
should prompt you for which CDs to use.
Your discs may not have that on them,
but run urpmi with the name of the missing
package and it should sort you out.
This is unfortunately a bad example, as the crossfader
does not seem to be on the discs.

The difference between glibc versions however is a big deal!
Mandrake 9.0 is NOT the current version and support is more limited.
You'll find life much easier if you go for 9.1.
It also comes with glibc-2.3 as default :-)

Mandrake has a GUI frontend that manages software sources for you.
I think it's probably rpmdrake - or package manager on the menus. gurpmi is also quite likely.

You should add sources for Contributed software and an Updates mirror.
I use


http://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/9.1/contrib/i586 and
http://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/updates/9.1/RPMS/

at the moment.

If you don't want to re-install, you might add
http://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/updates/9.0/RPMS/
to bring your system more up to date.
It still won't upgrade the system to a glibc 2.3 version though.

Hope that helps,
NiallB

ps
If you're happy with your system otherwise,
you might try to find the src.rpm for the xmms-crossfader and rebuild it.
That's much easier than it sounds!

You download it and run
rpm --rebuild xmms-crossfade-0.3.2-fr1.src.rpm
You'll hopefully get a binary rpm (linked with glibc-2.2)
which you can install on your mandrake 9.0 system.

pickarooney

Hi Niall,

Thanks a million for your detailed response. I've been internetless for a few days but it shouldbe all back to normal now. I downloaded and burned mandrake 9.1, hopefully will install it tonight. It's about time I updated I suppose, but it still feels a bit like failure having to install a new OS in order to be able to install a plugin!

I tried the rebuild command for the xmms crossfader, but I got dependency error messages - no xmms-devel package IIRC.

Will let you know what improvements the 9.1 install brought.

Cheers,
pickarooney

pickarooney

hmm, it looked as though it went alright, but there are a few hics, notably with the root account - no which or type command, no urpmi, when I su to root I get four errors -
dircolors, locale and tty not present. Mozilla had also regressed to version 1.3 and updating it to 1.4 failed - I cna't reinstall it now. Thinking of reinstalling a mandrke upgrade...

pickarooney

Installing mplayer now and I've managed to get the dependency failures down to two. Two rpms which interdepend on one another.

I need libdivxdecore.so.0 which is contained in libdivx4linux0-20021408-3plf.i586.rpm.

If I try to install this rpm, I can't because it's missing
divx4linux-20021408-3plf.i586.rpm

Can't install this, because libdivx4linux0-20021408-3plf.i586.rpm is missing.

And so in a circle viciously...

How does one install both at once?

P.S. The latest version of divx (5.0.5) is installed, which may or may not be causing the error.

niallb

Hmm, sounds like your first 9.1 install went badly wrong!
Did you choose the 'truly minimal install' ?
(The one with NOT INCLUDING URPMI in brackets after it :-)?

The libdivx and other codecs are not included by default,
as they have licensing issues...

The clue is in the letters 'plf' in the name of the rpm.
You must journey to the Penguin Liberation Front at
http://plf.zarb.org
You'll need to add plf as a urpmi source to make this automatic.

There is a tool called eazy urpmi at
http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon
Go to section 3 in particular where you can add plf for multimedia stuff
and texstar for some other material.

You can use it to set up all your software sources.
You select what mirrors you want and it generates a page that
you can paste into your prompt. This is really worth doing.
There's nothing like hearing about a package and just typing urpmi pkgname to see if you like it.
Running urpmi.update -a once a week will keep your mirror lists up to date,
and you can automate complete system updates. I'm amazed this feature of Mandrake isn't better known.
Debian's apt is seen as being one of its main features and the one thing urpmi can't do that apt can,
is upgrade Distro release version. i.e. You can't take a Mandrake 9.0 up to 9.1 with it.

Everything you need for mplayer will be at plf, and if the urpmi route gives you trouble,
you should be able to find the files at any of the plf mirrors,
for example http://mirrors.zoreil.com/plf.zarb.org/9.1/i586

Hope that get's you playing,
post back if you've any problems.

NiallB

pickarooney

A crushing victory over the rpm gremlins!

That just went so smoothly, filled in a couple of fields, was given a few commands, threw them at the terminal window and everything came barrelling down at 200kb/sec. Ran the mplayer rpm installer again and it all sank into place.

Once again, thanks a million Niall

nadir

been using mandrake for 2 years now. Every day was worse than the day before. I hate it. Im moving to gentoo. Im screwed atm I cant install python its fubar. They want me to join the mandrake club. haha, no way.
Die Mandrake Die.

pickarooney

Does Mandrake not come with Python?
I had a bit of a problem when I didn't realise I had two separate versions of it installed, but it was pretty straightfoward removing the older one.

Gentoo, you say... wonder if that'll recognise my gfx card properly...



:ninja:

lynchie

Originally posted by pickarooney


I need libdivxdecore.so.0 which is contained in libdivx4linux0-20021408-3plf.i586.rpm.

If I try to install this rpm, I can't because it's missing
divx4linux-20021408-3plf.i586.rpm

Can't install this, because libdivx4linux0-20021408-3plf.i586.rpm is missing.

And so in a circle viciously...

How does one install both at once?

AFAIK, to install two files which depend on one another just install both at the same time, so they are included in the same RPM transaction, i.e. rpm -vvi pkg1.rpm pkg2.prm

niallb

python is undergoing a major version change at the moment - and very slowly at that.

Different distros have chosen the older or newer version,
but it's causing headaches all over the place.
The problem is the new one is NOT backward compatible with the old one.
You can't simply remove it as it may break some dependencies.
p.s. urpmi mozilla should get you straight back up to 1.4.

Another thing is you don't have to install a distro to detect your gfx card.
The most capable autodetect around at the moment is a recent Knoppix CD.
Gentoo won't even try - at least on sparc. (What is the card?)
Just boot Knoppix, let it detect and copy the generated file /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to your local hard drive.

To nadir, I'd say what are you trying to install python for?
Is it to fulfil a dependency or to use the language?
There is a more recent release (2.3) out a few weeks ago which is newer than
the conflict that has caused trouble for so long.
If you're downloading that, you're very unlikely to get it to work.
The software should have a specific version requirement.
It is not a minimum version, but an exact version.

Gentoo is a lot more hands on than Mandrake.
If you're used to building your own software, you'll enjoy it.

NiallB

nadir

NiallB.
I need wxpython to run an app called pyslsk. 'Python soul seek' , While getting the new version of this app i innocently decided to update my python. First of all I removed the old python and the dependancies (using rpm and urpmi) and replaced everything correctly, however it was unable to locate the python libs. I tried everything from compiling all to trying to redirect using symlinks and placing the correct path in the code before config and make. I got some other error to but I cant rmember exactly what it was, something to to with incoorect version i think, Basically it was a disaster,. Anyway I dont like mandrake, this would all be sorted if I had acces to the mandrake club rpms. Its this mish mash of new stuff i compile not being compatable with the free mandrake rpms that cause most of my problems. Its ok tho as soon as i get a burner im swithing to á true linux' gentoo, cant wait.

niallb

Hi Nadir,
all this stuff is on plf.
Have you added the sources from
the eazy urpmi URL I mentioned to pickarooney?
http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon
In fact, it's even mentioned on pyslsk's homepage

If you do that, just typing
urpmi pyslsk
should be all you need to do.

I've just confirmed it on my own system,
running 9.1, it pulled down and installed everything needed.

I'm using a matched set of python-2.2.2-6mdk RPMs.

Give it a shot,
good luck,
NiallB

p.s. If python version give you a problem,
remove ALL version of python and rerun the urpmi command.

pickarooney

It took me ages to install pySoulSeek, cause I'd two version of python and the GTK thingy installed in a sub-directory of the wrong one. I eventually removed python 2.3 and got a rpm for pyslsk and its dependencies. Works a treat now.

On the other hand, Mozilla went mad this morning, and I can no longer save any links, pages or images, it just ignores the command. I can save with Galeon or Konqueror no problem, but Mozilla won't hear of it. And all the buttons in the Mozilla mail window are greyed out except Compose. Madness.
Does it make sense to uninstall and reinstall, like you would if a windows prog fscked up?

[edit]uninstalled and reinstalled. works fine again now. and just like windows, i'll never know why...[/edit]

niallb

You can check if the application is damaged
using the verify mode of rpm.
rpm -V mozilla will list any files there are problems with.
The results are in a code which you can find in
man rpm - from line 419 at the moment.

If you don't run as root - which of course you don't...
it's very unlikely mozilla is damaged.

Create a new user and log in with the new identity.
Launch mozilla and see how it behaves.

Most likely you have some config files in your home directory
from an older mozilla version. This is the curse of mozilla.
Either that or it's a permissions problem.
Any other changes recently like restoring parts
of your home directory from backup?
ls -l ~/.moz* and see if anything looks wrong.

(Did this happen after upgrading to 1.4?)

While discussing browsers, I find galeon dog slow
for boards.ie (same with any mozilla based browser).
I use dillo just for this, and it runs blindingly fast.
Also it's only about 300k.

Check it out - only thing it doesn't do is smilies insert :-)
You need to put the line
.boards.ie ACCEPT
in your ~/.dillo/cookiesrc
so it can remember who you are.

Probably not much of a problem to most people,
but my workstation is a PIII 650 - fastest I could
get without a fan.

NiallB

pickarooney

I also find mozilla extremely slow for vBulletin sites, not noticeably slower on any "normal" sites though.
Hadn't heard of dillo until now, I'll be sure to check it out. Come to think of it, it might be on that Knoppix cd...

When I updated mozilla two days ago, I only got version 1.3.4. The university I automatically update from mustn't have 1.4 on its mirror?
I tried to update it again last night, and got an everything is installed message. The first time I tried to save anything from mozilla since then, I noticed I couldn't, but that's not to say it was this that caused the bugginess. More likely some config files, like you say.
I think I ran galeon as root, possibly also mozilla by accident, but I don't think so. Either way, it's all fixed now by uninstalling/reinstalling.
Working in tech support has given me the reflex to do this rather than try to find the source of the problem, unfortunately

Have to say, I feel like I'm beginning to get the hang of this linux lark. Nearly ten years of working with Unix and I'm still a complete novice though.

niallb

Originally posted by pickarooney
When I updated mozilla two days ago, I only got version 1.3.4. The university I automatically update from mustn't have 1.4 on its mirror?

You might need to run
urpmi.update -a to update your lists.
urpmi should take care of it after that.
Make sure texstar is added as a source.

mozilla-1.4 is on texstar at the moment.
The 1.3.4 you matched is from Mandrake updates.

You'll find a recent dillo there too.

NiallB

pickarooney

http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon is closed down
And I hadn't added textar.
Must be an active mirror somewhere...
/me goes a huntin'

niallb

You don't need the eazy urpmi, it's just convenient.

You can add texstar like this:

urpmi.addmedia Texstar ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/contrib/texstar/mandrake/9.1/rpms with hdlist.texstar.cz

Once you find any mirror you can add it like this.
You need either a hdlist file or a synthesis file.

If you set up your own local repository, for example
of RPMs you've built yourself, the genhdlist command
will create the hdlist for you in the directory.
I build a lot of software and try to package it as RPMs
for convenience.
I put some of the more awkward ones on niallb.lapsedhippy.com/Mandrake
(By this I mean usually ones that required a lot of "interference" with spec files and makefiles to build.
I usually start with a spec file for an older release and build from tarball if an rpm isn't available)

I tend to put all the CDs into a big directory on one machine,
and then add the Update, Contrib,PLF and Texstar sources.

To set up a full distribution is a little different, you use:
urpmi.addmedia --distrib ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/9.1/Mandrake
Point to the directory containing base/

The manpage (IMHO) is a little unclear, but with these examples,
it'll make sense.

NiallB

nadir

Thanks for the help niallb, did all you said, but still the same error. for example when i try to run pyslsk i get .....

Could not find platform independent libraries <prefix>
Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to <prefix>[:<exec_prefix>]
'import site' failed; use -v for traceback
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/pyslsk", line 65, in ?
import sys, getopt, os.path
ImportError: No module named getopt

niallb

Sounds like you don't have python-base installed.
Run rpm -q python-base.
The version I have (that ran with pyslsk) is python-base-2.2.2-6mdk.

Are you sure you removed all versions of python before running the urpmi command?
Between python, python-base, libpython etc it can be awkward.
The other thing is if you had installed a python based rpm from redhat or suse
instead of mandrake, they are unlikely to have had the same name.

This is not usually the case, but with python at the moment in a state of flux, the names probably don't match.

rpm -qa | grep py should catch everything python related on your system.
Post the result of that command if checking whether you have python-base installed doesn't help.

Good luck,
NiallB

nadir

yes , u are right, I had compiled python base in the wrong place and had sym links mis directing stuff, from when I was trying to sort out my earlier python version problems.. Anyway i removed all the rpms with kpackage, and used easy urpmi to update eveything. All works fine now. Thanks, I own u one.

pickarooney

After an unfortunate knee-meets drawer incident, my CD-burner (and main CDROM drive) is dead.
I have another CDROM reader but can't figure out how to use it as the default drive for urpmi.
Alternatively, if I could disactivate searching the CDROM for packages and just download them directly...

Any ideas?

parasite

go to mandrake control centre -> software management and define where the packages are to be downloaded from

use the plf http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/ to get addresses of mirrors ..working again

pickarooney

Cheers. It only worked for the first CD though, for the other two it was unable to update the medium.

parasite

what do you mean ? if your cd is broken, delete the cd entries, and add an ftp

niallb

urpmi.removemedia is what you want.
It will ask you which entry you want to remove and list the possibilities.
Just delete all the CD entries.

urpmi.addmedia --distrib http://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/mandrake/9.1/1586

is all you need to say goodbye to the CDs for good.
For good measure, it also sets up the Contrib directory.

NiallB

pickarooney

Thanks again Niall. I took out the CD ROM drive to try open it up, but there were only funny shaped screws in it, so I couldn't open it. I coaxed the drawer in an out a couple of times, but only by pure force. Then I hit the open drawer a slap from the opposite side to the original kneeing, and lo and behold it fixed itself up. Saves me a couple of quid.
That's the only good new though, the system itself is totally gone to the dogs of late, it hangs all the time switching betwen applications or just opening webpages, completely unusable, really.
Just when I was getting it all nicely configured I'm going to have to reformat again.
Hehe, it's good practice at least, and maybe the gfx card will magically configure itself during reinstallation. One can always hope.

niallb

Hold off on re-installing (unless you really want to, of course). If you've a hardware problem, it mightn't get you anywhere.
It's bound to be something simple that's causing the hangs.
Graphic drivers are one thing that can cause this kind of problem, but they are closely followed by problems with IDE evices.
An interrupt error on a dodgy CD drive can lock the system hard and cause problems.
Try running it for a day with the CD unplugged and see where
that gets you.
Re-installing might be educational, but checking out the system logs to find out why this is happening is a hundred times more so!

Good luck,
NiallB

pickarooney

True enough, it's just very hard to know where to start with a "general sluggishness" error.
If it was the graphics driver I reckon it would have been apparent from the beginning, no?
As for interrupt errors, might this explain another problem, with the floppy drive access being completely random - fo rinstance, I put in a disk and start copying files to the HD when suddenly it stops and tells me there's no floppy or I can't access it.
The same floppy will work fine on windows, or even on linux on another day, if the computer feels like it.

Apart from plugging out the CDROM drive(s), do I need to deactivate them or remove them from fstab?

pickarooney

Very early to tell, but with the CDROM drives plugged out things are zipping along for now.
I'll see in a day or so if the problem doesn't come back. Must test the floppy drive a bit as well.

pickarooney

Pretty conclusive, nice fast performance all week, then today I plugged back in one of the CDROM drives (not the battered one, but it's knocking on for 10 years old itself) and a couple of hours later things started to slow down again.

During a reboot earlier I saw a couple of references to DMA not being activated on my primary HD.
Is this something that needs to be rectified or is it not an issue for HD access speeds in Linux?

[edit] hdparm -d returns a value of on for each HD, and the CDROM, so the question is probably moot [/edit]

niallb

Originally posted by pickarooney
...
During a reboot earlier I saw a couple of references to DMA not being activated on my primary HD.
Is this something that needs to be rectified or is it not an issue for HD access speeds in Linux?
hdparm -d returns a value of on for each HD, and the CDROM, so the question is probably moot

Not really, the older cdrom probably isn't capable of DMA,
and is forcing it off on the interface.
Sounds like the new one, while supporting it, is damaged enough not to be able to feed data as fast as it promises the OS.

How many ide drives do you have?
If you've only one, put the cdrom on another controller,
it will always improve performance, and here would make a huge difference.

NiallB

pickarooney

I've two hard drives on one IDE controller, and the two CROM drives (were) on the other. A new, fast burnproof burner should be in my sweay hands by this weekend...

Btw, the esat ftp link seems to be down, do you know any good mirrors for full distros?

Typedef

ftp.heanet.ie

pickarooney

Sorted. Thanks

pickarooney

This is becoming almost blog-like.
Bought a new DVD-player/CD-burner combo, plugged it in, rebooted, it autorecognised and mounted, to /mnt/cdrom, device name hdc.

I can't read from it though, Input/output error when I try to list the contents of a CD in there, as normal user or root.

<edit: output of mount command added>
/dev/hdb1 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
none on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
none on /dev type devfs (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,mode=0620)
/dev/hdb6 on /home type ext3 (rw)
none on /mnt/cdrom type supermount (ro,dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0)
none on /mnt/cdrom2 type supermount (ro,dev=/dev/hdd,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0)
none on /mnt/floppy type supermount (rw,sync,dev=/dev/fd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

niallb

Originally posted by pickarooney
This is becoming almost blog-like.
Bought a new DVD-player/CD-burner combo, plugged it in, rebooted, it autorecognised and mounted, to /mnt/cdrom, device name hdc.
...

none on /mnt/cdrom type supermount (ro,dev=/dev/scd0,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0)
none on /mnt/cdrom2 type supermount (ro,dev=/dev/hdd,fs=auto,--,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,umask=0)

Hi P,
device may be hdc, but with ide-scsi loaded it's reporting here as /dev/scd0.
Do you have a second CD drive working in the system? (The one mentioned here at hdd.)
Try an ls /mnt/cdrom2 and see how that works.

Check that you have an entry for iso9660 in /etc/filesystems if you're using autofs on it. Long shot that last one...

NiallB

pickarooney

Hi Niall,

I think that entry was from the previous CDROM drive. I had to re-add the hdc=ide-scsi line to the lilo.conf file, change fstab and reboot a couple of times, but it eventually worked, and burns away merrily.

Cheers,
Pickers

pickarooney

Haha, the stone of too-soon speaking makes its weight felt. I'm back to absolute crawlage (15 minutes so far from launching Mozilla to typing this).
IDE cable bust? Something enirely different? Wtf breed of sloth-demon has infested my system this time? Crazy-making, cement-swimming valium-aspected interface of lethargy...
Once more out with the cable and let's get testing.
Bugger, looks like I wasted a bit of cash on a new burner after all. Ah well, at least it looks cool, all black and shiny, even if it only burned at 8x of its purported 52x-ness.