I have been using RH8.0, SuSE 8.1 and Mandrake 9.0 without too may problems in the past. Most applications installed without any problems.

I just reinstalled Mandrake 9.0 with about 2.3Gb of software and wanted to update the following packages to the latest versions:
- xine
- gphoto
- WindowMaker
- xcdroast

I downloaded them as usual but not one of them installed without any errors. Errors appeared such as automake not installed (when it is), try ldconfig, run pkg-config, etc.

Did I miss installing an obvious package that I should have or are my linux skills going backwards?

How did you try to update these packages? Was it via Mandrake's tools, or did you download newer versions? If you downloaded newer versions, are they tarballs or sources?

I highly doubt it's your skills Sometimes it's the small things even the smartest of people will overlook.

Was the automake error saying "automake isn't installed at all" or "a version of automake that is required to install this package isn't installed"?

Can you provide us with a bit more info? Thanks!

Cool

They were separate packages from the actual application website. For example, for xine, I downloaded the latest lib...etc.tar.gz and gui...etc.tar.gz. For xcdroast, window maker, gphoto etc I also downloaded the required tarballs.

It was just surprising that all four or five of the different applications failed due to different reasons when my same compile and installation process has been working successfully in the past (ie generally following the readme). Anything simple come to mind without going to the detail of every application.

No, not really. I am actually baffled. So you have tried running ldconfig, and updatedb? I am wondering if maybe these packages require the dev versions of the "missing" packages to be installed? I've run across that a time or 2, and wasn't sure why, but it just seemed to want the dev packages.

Good Luck

Cool

Thanks anyway. Thought I would ask just in case there was something kooky that I had missed.