Can someone help me get this stuff straight, I am trying to install some programs...so I downlaod the RPM file, save it, go into Konsole, type

urpmi (rpm file name here), then I get

"medium "contrib" uses an invalid list file:
mirror is probably not up-to-date, trying to use alternate method"

I have tried like 3 different mirrors, and I guess they are all not up to date or somthin. WHen I try to use ROMDRrake to downlaod and install software, I get bad signature errors, then the installation fails on me.

This happens to everything, how can I fix this?

Can someone tell me how to up date everything? People are telling me things, but only in little, hard to understand fractions.

Thank you
~Kyle.

you can update the list of thigns available with

urpmi.update -a

(as root). This will download the newest list of fiels available. The thing about invalid lists you're getting probably won't get solved, though. I get it all the time but does not prevent me from installing things. The bad signature means that urpmi cannot validate that the rpm is coming from a safe source though contrib mirrors and plf should be fine. If you're comfortable with it, you can just ignore it (no different from installing things in windows...). I think there's a way to download the signature files to check. Not sure. Just look around.

As for the installtion failures. What are the error messages you are getting?

I go into Konsle and type (as root) urpmi.removemedia -a, then I get some FTP servers for main, plf, contrib, and updates, and I put em in, it does all its stuff and I get no errors, then I go into RPMDrake, right click, click 'update media' it updates, I get no errors, then I select the packages I wanna install, and click 'Install', it will download the files and right after the download I get an error giving me a list of file names, and it says that they have bad signatures, asks if I wanna continue, I continue, it installs, then I get an error that says there was a problem during install, it says that "medium 'contrib' uses an invailed list file", then it says it might be because the FTP server is not up-to-date, and under that it says 'unable to install package(s) blah blah blah.'

..So, nothing is installing! >.

This is realy irritating me, I wanna use LInux a lot, but if its gonna be a b*tch about everything ill go back to win-blows.

I am suffering from the same EXACT problem. Every program I try to load using RPMDrake comes back with "medium 'contrib' uses an invailed list file".

try doing it from the command line to get more feedback. Use rpmdrake to find out the package name and then do
urpmi package-name

this will download and install things (rpmdrake is just a frontend; it does the typing for you, as itwere). Don't worry about bad signature thing. But see if you get other problems - I doubt the invalid list thing is preventing you from installing things. In rpmdrake, you can tell where the package is available and choose one that is in the contrib and and that is not. If both fail to install, it's not the list file that is causing trouble.