hello,

I'm a Linux user of about 18 months - I've just successfully installed Suse 9.1 with few problems, but now I've got a serious problem: XMame can't be installed because of a ludicrous failed dep: libslang.so.1 is missing. This can only be found as part of whole slang packages which can't be installed (without removing or downgrading lots of other important apps), but without it XMame doesn't install, and can't be forced.

Weirdly, GXMame is in the Suse 9.1 repository, but XMame isn't. I found an RPM of xmame-0.60.1-469.i586.rpm for Suse 9.X, but this is the one which complains about libslang.so.1. The fact that XMame is missing from the repo suggests people are well aware of this problem -- but I can't find any solutions anywhere online, which amazes me (I can barely find anyone complaining about the problem).

So, please help: IS there a way to successfully install XMame in Suse 9.1? How?

Any help would be VERY much appreciated.

try building from source. make sure you have SDL-devel files and the usual build tools (gcc,binutils etc)

yes i too am having troubles with libslang.so.1 i am trying to install xmms tho. not xmame. i am now attempting to just ignore all of the problems but i do not know if it will install XMMS properly tho. will try.

Hi,

Just installed xmame on a P4 sff with SUSE 9.1. The following is a quick note on what to do:

In Yast -> hardware -> Joystick find a joystick driver which works with your device (try any if it's not specifically listed).

You'll need the XFree86-devel and SDL-devel packages (Yast) and the source for xmame ( http://x.mame.net/download/xmame-0.86.tar.bz2 ).

Uncompress the xmame directory in a temporary area (/tmp/).
(Commandline: cp xmame-0.86.tar.bz2 /tmp; tar --bunzip2 -xvf /tmp/xmame-0.86.tar.bz2)

Edit the Makefile (/tmp/makefile.unix). SUSE specific: Uncomment these two lines (remove the hash '#'):
And for joystick support uncomment any of the joystick lines you think you'll use (best to do at least these 3, others may not compile):
Nb: I couldn't get the experimental network option (XMAME_NET = 1) to compile. It seems it didn't work in the 0.85 release, so i left it commented.

Open a shell terminal and type 'cd /tmp/xmame-0.86/; make'. Check output for errors...

Nb: If you want rerun make with different options in Makefile, you must run 'make clean' before rerunning 'make'

If there's no errors, type 'su' and enter your root password, then type 'make install'

Last line should say:
xmame for linux-i386 installation completed

Exit this root shell with - Control D - keys or type 'exit'
Now type 'mkdir ~/.xmame; cp /tmp/xmame-0.86/src/unix/doc/xmamerc.dist ~/.xmame/xmamerc.dist'

Read the docs on how to config your 'xmamerc.dist' file, for path to ROMs etc. You can test most options on the commandline, different joysticks eg. 'xmame.x11 <gamename> -scale 2 -jt 7'. More info type 'man xmame'

There's loads of GUI front-ends available eg. GXMAME.

Providing no error messages, the binary is '/usr/local/bin/xmame.x11', and your ready to go.


Nb: You can use a P2P client such as gtk-gnutella (Yast) to get loads of ROMS instead of the web search with 'mame rom'

seems like this should work just fine.. i will test this and report if anything goes wrong. good post.

Please consider compiling it from source. When using the proper settings in the Makefile (I'll gladly help you with those), the speed improvement over the version SuSE supplies you with is tremendous! We're talking factors here; I remember some games being about 10 times as fast after I compiled xmame from source.

Hi phulshof,

The problem is that suse 9.1 doesn't include xmame so it must be compiled from source (or get a compatible rpm). I put up some makefile tips in August.

I think i remember older versions of Yast2 having a source install option. Can't remember whether that was just copying the sources or actually installing from source. Why aren't packages done like this anyway?

Earcam,

Interesting! I hadn't even noticed that they stopped shipping xmame with SuSE 9.1. I stopped using their version around 8.2, since it was so very slow compared to my own compiles.

From what I remember, the source install was just that: installing the source code. You still had to compile the thing yourself from there. Since xmame is updated so regularly though, it's probably best to get the source directly from x.mame.net. For a source distribution: check out the gentoo or sorceror Linux. With most tools I don't really see an increase in speed; xmame is a special occasion.

There is libslang.so.1 in the slang...rpm of SuSE 8.1.
You can extract it with mc; copy it (the symlink) and the real lib to /usr/lib.
It works halfway; there may be problems with OSS-sound.