I installed Fedora Core 5 a few days ago, and it's been giving me some problems. Whenever I try to start 'Add/Remove Software' (pirut), it gets stuck at 'Retrieving Software List'. Basically, it hangs.

Same with 'Software Updater'. Sometimes it starts ok, but gets stuck at 'Resolving dependences'.

Tried using yum, but it downloads the whole file 100% done, then everytime it says it can't install (bad key / server timeout [even after 100% download]). I reinstalled it, same problems.

Then I reinstalled FC 5 from scratch, after reformatting hard drive, but problem persisted. I haven't been able to install any new software, except RealPlayer for Linux and Skype (not from terminal).

So since I can't use yum or other ways, and I want to install VLC Player, Xine, MP3-capable Totem, I wanted to know how I can do that while having malfunctioning software managers. I downloaded their RPMs from freshrpms.net and tried doing a command-line install, but I have many missing dependencies.

I had the same impression at the beginning - that Pirut and Software updater were not working. But I then noticed that it just takes some time, it looks like they hang, but if you are patient you will see that they do work. They are just slow.

I let it run once for 30 minutes, with no sign of the bar progressing. Stuck at about 10% I guess. Anyway, why is yum having problems with any file? And how do I fulfil dependencies without these.

This might help
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...65#post2205265

Cheers

I've got an 'always-on' broadband connection, so hangup due to an 'unable to access network' shouldn't be the issue.

I repeat 'Did u read my post there??'. I got an always-on net too mate.

As I mentioned in my post, I have problems installing software anyway.

As for Kyum, maybe it's nice, but the stable download is for FC 4. Any compatibility issues? It seems to be an experimental software and I don't want to end up with a hung sysytem because of this. Is it safe to install on FC 5?

Thanks for looking into it though.

Why do we have this problem with FC 5?

Yep Kyum is absolutely neat. Ive had no problems with it whatsoever.

Well FC5, problematic or not i love it. Besides its the 1st linux thats been on my box for more than a month

I had the same problem on a system I installed for a friend. However, "yum install packagename" worked flawlessly. They didn't mind using the shell, so that solved their problem.

If you don't mind the shell, I highly recommend using yum.

Hi all! I observed too, that pirut is sometimes strange. But yumex works just fine. No key problems or hang-up downloads.

I had this problem, too, at first. The simplest solutions usually work the best, I've been told.
I rebooted and at the login, I logged in as root, rather than user. I know that this is not 'standard procedure', but it worked for me. You may need to reboot a couple of times, but pirut will start this way. For some reason (unknown to me) logging in as user, then attempting to start pirut causes these 'hangs' in FC5. But doing the initial starting of pirut from the root interface can get you past it. After doing it this way a couple of times, you can start it from the user interface.
After I logged in as root, pirut started. It did take a while, but it worked. The first additional software that I attempted to install gave the message that there were missing dependencies. I restarted pirut and chose to add the development libraries - the default only. I tried again and all but one of the software packages I had chosen were fine. So I gave some thought to what I was attempting to install and what it might be dependent on, chose the package most likely to contain what was needed and installed it. This brought success.
I'm simply a home user. I'm very new to Linux systems, too. I couldn't say if there's a better way to do this, but this simple solution worked for me.
When one way doesn't work, I look for another. That way is always the simplest I can find.

I hope this helps!
-Merlin

Nice advice. Thanks, I'll try. But technically, it shouldn't be a problem since pirut can be run with root priviledges, and it didn't work that way. In fact, I've kept my primary group as root.

I always find software installation on Linux a far bigger headache, as compared to Windows.

I may shift to the Ubuntu Dapper Drake, so I'm not messing with software install on Fedora a lot these days. Just the basics.

I agree that this is often the case, but on the other hand cleanly removing any given package under Linux is, without exception, simpler and more robust under a package-based Linux distribution than under Windows.

For example, you never see a package-based Linux distro telling you that a file is no longer being used by any other software on your system, then asking you if you are sure that it should be removed. Oh, I know what the reason is: the uninstall software doesn't know whether or not any software not installed with a similar package manager is using the file (usually a DLL), but really: how the hell is the user going to know whether some arbitrary package is using some arbitrary file or not? That's what package managers are for: to manage packages. When Windows finally uses The One True Package Manager (or whatever Microsoft deems suitable for the task), the problem will go away, but in the meantime it's a pain in the proverbial...

End of rant.

I agree with you there. However, it'd be nice if I actually get to install something on Linux cleanly before removing it.