I have been trying to make urpmi do updates ever since I installed Mandrake 9.1, and it is still totally unreliable, and buggy as all hell. It has so many errors that updating is a bigger chore than just using rpm. Here is a brief list of the problems I can remember from the last couple of weeks:
[list=1][*]Won't update its media, I actually have to delete and recreate my media every time I want to update it.[*]Frequently throws perl errors when computing hdlist info.[*]Frequently tells me that everything is installed when there are newer packages on my update mirror, and I have updated my media (via recreation as per above problem). [/list=1]

I will grant the last problem could have to do with poor mirror maintenance, but the problem is a pervasive one so far as I can tell.

Now for some questions:
[list=1][*]Is this kind of behavior typical of urpmi?[*]If so, why the hell is it being included in the distro?[*]If this is not typical behavior, what could be causing so many different errors, and at such different times?[*]I need help, what are the rest of you doing for updates?[/list=1]

yeah i found it unreliable in MDK9.1

but in 9.2 .... Sweet as!!!

Personally I have never had a problem with urpmi.

I am a very non technical pointy-clicky windoze refugee btw, but find the concept and the instructions (particularly at the PLF help site) so straightforward that configuring all sources was not a great problem.

(Would suggest btw, slightly off-topically, that anyone using this system creates a separate partition for /var since urpmi dumps all config and rpm files to this directory and if you don't have them separated out from / you'll find it a total PIA if you have to reinstall.)

urpmi has worked for me under 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2 using several different mirrors. I can't speak for what happens if you try to upgrade your sources from one mdk version to the next since I ignored my own advice above when moving from 9.1 to 9.2 and had to recreate all sources.

I can't suggest any rationale for your problems (for reasons stated above in para 2) but if you can sort it out, and if you can get to use the tool as it was intended to be used, it's a dream for anyone, particularly newbs, who's ever suffered from rpm hell or had a problem compiling from source. And there are a huge no. of packages out there.

just my 2c worth

jd

I think urpmi is fantastic. Here are the things I do.

One, if you run into a snag, assume the problem is with the FTP source. Change sources. Here's a web applet that gives you commands to paste into a terminal:
http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/

Every once in awhile, or if you have trouble, do:
urpmi.update -a

Stick with it, urpmi is amazing.

yeah thats my suggestion too.

Although with MDK9.1 update would never work,
error saying

"could not resolve host 2-o"

or some weird name.

Right now, in MDK9.2 my "contrib" source always comes up first and errors saying bad list or something, but i have changed sources several times using that above site ^^

Everything always manages to install, so.. so far so good.

I just want to say again how great urpmi is.

One of my boxes was running Mandrake 9.1. Last night I decided I wanted Mandrake 9.2. Here's all it took:
1)Change urpmi sources to 9.2
2)urpmi --auto-select

That's it. Boom. I went from Mandrake 9.1 -> Mandrake 9.2 with no work, all thanks to urpmi.