Smart seemed to be working just fine for me and then it started giving errors. I don't recall if it was before or after I upgraded my system to 64 bit but I suspect after. Regardless, the version of Smart I have is not the 64 bit version so I would like to completely remove what I have and freshly install the 64 bit version. YAST is not an option for me as for other reasons I cannot get the Control Manager to open. It just dies after entering my root password. This is no great loss if Smart is working OK (but it's not). Any suggestions on removing Smart would be appreciated. Also any links to resetting the channels again. I have lost my links to that too. My distro is OpenSuSE 10.1

You could open a console and su to root to remove smart.

Start with 'rpm -qa | less' to get a full list of all packages installed. When you get to the smart package, write down the package name.

Then run 'rpm -q --requires <package name>' replacing <package name> with the name of the smart package, to get a list of other packages which require smart. They will have to be upgraded to 64 bit before you can install the new smart package.

Finally, run 'rpm -e <smart package name>', to remove smart. Do the same for any other packages you need to upgrade before installling the new smart package.

Then install the supporting packages, if any, before trying to install smart.

I don't know if SuSE 10.X still requires one to run /sbin/SuSEconfig after manually removing/installing rpms. It's done automatically by YaST when using YaST to manage packages. When doing package management manually, run /sbin/SuSEconfig to manually to keep YaST informed of changes in the system. Otherwise, YaST (and possibly Smart) will refuse to do anything with those packages.

Excellent and thanks. Would it be better for me to try (amd maybe you could suggest) how to get the YAST GUI to work and un-install smart from there? Or would it not be thourough anyhow?

My understanding of Smart is that it's a replacement for YaST, which includes features of another distros' package management. My suspicion is that Smart is what is disabling YaST. Perhaps YaST will work when Smart is out of the picture.

My experience with YaST is that it will warn you, when installling;removing packages, if you are about to break something (package requirements or dependencies). If you can get it working, it will be thorough.

You could try looking into /var/log/messages and /var/log/YaST2 logs for info on what's failing when you try to start YaST.

Thanks for your advice. I have established that I have the right Smart, 64 bit.
I realize that Smart is not your forte but I was wondering what you might suggest to handle the following;
This happens every time I try to do an Smart undate, after everything is downloaded and ready to install, except it won't install because;

"Trying to import the key 3b3011b76b9d6523 from pgp.mit.ed...
error: gpg failed to import keyid 3b3011b76b9d6523, please make sure that gpg is installed, that the keyserver pgp.mit.ed is working and that the package /var/lib/smart/packages/kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1.x86_64.rpm has a valid signature.

error: kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1.x86_64.rpm: public key not available"

1. gpg is installed
2. I have no idea how to establish that the pgp keyserver is working
3. I don't know how to ensure the package /var/lib/smart/packages/kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1.x86_64.rpm has a valid signature
4 I don't know how to make the public key available

When I try to install kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.x86_64.rpm with Kpackage I get the following message;

"<lib/smart/packages/kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1.x86_64.rpm';echo RESULT=$?
package kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1 is intended for a x86_64 architecture
file /opt/kde3/share/mimelnk/application/x-bittorrent.desktop from install of kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1 conflicts with file from package ktorrent-2.0_0.2-1.guru.suse101
file /opt/kde3/share/mimelnk/application/x-mplayer2.desktop from install of kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1 conflicts with file from package kaffeine-0.8.1-18.1
file /opt/kde3/share/mimelnk/application/x-mplayer2.desktop from install of kdelibs3-3.5.4-56.1 conflicts with file from package kmplayer-0.9.2_2.0-1.guru.suse101
RESULT=2"

Since the package is supposed to be for 64 bit and since I have a 64 bit system I don't believe the conflicts reported.

I'm game to try anything short of reinstalling the OS