Noob losing his cool
 

Okay, I have an imac g3 from 2000 or so that crashed about six months ago and, being terminally poor, I opted to take "the plunge", erased my crashed hard drive and installed mandrake 9.1 .
Now, I've done quit a bit of research on the commands concerning the Unix shells and played with a Knoppix "demo" for several months. Having the real thing, however, is a different experience entirely.
I am having a terrible time getting anything to install. I mean anything. I either get a "missing library" error or the increasingly frusrating "This rpm is for a different architecture." Fine. I figured the latter message was due to using RedHat rpms on the Mandrake system (a'la Yahoo messenger rpm for RH9. Everyone swears up and down this works. Not for me.) I'm beginning to wonder, however if this message is due to the fact I'm using an imac?
To add to the frustration, I tried to install the latest Gaim rpm specifically for Mandrake 9.1 and I got a library error(!). The "missing library" errors seem common, but the only information I can find on the net (which is so loaded with info it's actually a little disorienting) goes something like, "to fix this problem, check your libraries. If you're missing the library, go get it and install it!" Well, easy for you to say. Where are these libraries? How do I find them? What is going on? I'm terribly confused!
I apologize if these issues have been addressed before, but after three days of research, trips to the library, and digging through the approx. 500,000 posts that pop up every time I enter a help subject, I'm at the end of my rope. Could someone please just point me in the right direction as to where I can find good, concise, basic, step-by-step help about software installation and maybe Linux in general?
I see the potential there is in Linux(the terminal available on the bottom of Konquerer is brilliant!) and the community that surrounds it, and I'd love to be a part of it all. Please help.
Many thanks.
:newbie:

Most rpm's are going to be compiled for a specific architecture - x86 - meaning not a mac, right. You need to find rpm's compiled for - I dunno. PPC? What arch macs are. And that's probably going to make your hunt a little harder.

As far as the libs, usually if you paste the exact name reported to be causing a problem into a google box and hit enter, you'll find links to relevant information. If you slice off the specific 'foobar.so.9' into a general 'foobar' you'll get links to the relevant homepages. You can also try searching freshmeat or sourceforge. (There are sometimes easier distro specific things - and arch specific things - but not knowing RH and macs, I'm not sure what they'd be.)

I was on ancient hardware with old distros to start out with and my first was rpm based besides, and I couldn't get much of anything to compile or install either. It's extremely frustrating, I know. But it's doable. And gets better.

Like this - got old versions, so had to refine to "0.75" but
gaim ppc rpm mandrake "0.75" at google turns up this half a dozen links down
mandrake ppc gaim rpm. Dunno if it's what you need, but maybe.

First of all, let me extend a huge "THANK YOU!" to digiot. I looked into the site you suggested and now understand the proccess much better. That explanation did me more good than the hours of research I had done on my own. Thank you.
HOWEVER, the item I was trying to install was Gaim, but there's no current version for ppc.
So I opted to download the source and try to build it. When I tried the ./configure command I got this error:
"checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr//bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... configure: error: newly created file is older than distributed files!
Check your system clock"
The problem is, everytime I try to set my clock, when I hit the "ok", it resets itself to 4:00 Dec 31, 1969(!?). So I can't fix that. I'm ready to go nuts. Should I just try an entirely different distro? (I tried Yellow Dawg, but I couldn't get the internet going, and I tried Debian, but the install was hard. Really hard.)

Yeah - Debian's install sucks. :) I don't know - another distro might help. 'Slackintosh' has the coolest name in the world (I'm a sucker for punny things like that) - and it's Slack! But, seriously, I don't know. Macs are completely foreign territory to me.

Yeah, you are going to get that error. I think it has to do with the compiler knowing what to do when you tell it to make clean - it won't produce files out of chronology and so, if your clock's wrong, it won't work. That's ringing some bell like something specific is wrong, but I can't think what it is.

How are you setting the clock? With a GUI thing, or using the date command? I'd try the date command. If it isn't working - I think what's ringing a bell is 'hwclock'. I've never had to mess with it so I don't know much about it. It's a tool that seems to mess with the hardware clock rather than software and may or may not be run from initscripts - which is where I remember seeing it from.

Google for that kind of thing and see if anything looks good. *All kinds* of things will go wrong if your clock is off. But if you get that fixed, *all kinds* of things may start working better.

I thought that link was for a recent gaim you could use, though? Maybe not - as I say, out of my territory here.

Glad the post helped you out some. Wish I could be more help, but keep searching and experimenting and posting here and you'll get it worked out. :)

Doesn't it sync with the hardware clock on shutdown?

You said you've played with knoppix before ? On the imac ? If tha's the case, you should try to install that. Debian's got packages for everything and Knoppix is debian based. Or try to find another ppc distro based on Debian

Another choice is Gentoo, since, it will compile the apps you want from source. Apparently, although not trivial, it's apparently not that complicate.

But I think Debian is definitely the way to go. Also, Debian is getting a new installer ! So things should get easier.

Good luck

You could try this rpm I found on sourceforge: ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/mirrors/linuxppc/contrib/software/Applications/Internet/gaim-0.9.8-1.ppc.rpm. Good luck.

Thanks all
 

First, thanks to all who responded. Once again a special thanks to digiot. I looked up the subject on Google and found the commands to reset the internal clock. Unfortunately, I got it a little wrong, so the time is set wrong, but the date is correct. The command I used, however, slowed my start-up and shut-down processes and any time I set the clock, it took a good ten minutes to set in. (The slowdown on boot and shut-down was caused by the clocksync. On the shut-down, after about ten minutes of frozen nothing, there was an error message that referred to a lack of sufficient memory(?) to sync the clock. I'm not sure that's exactly right, though, because the error was only up for moments before the computer shut off.)
Needless to say, I wiped the hard drive(again) and reinstalled the whole s.o.b. Still, although tthe time's not correct, the date and year are correct. Thus, I think I'm going to try to live with it until I either get the gumption to try again or it becomes a major issue.
To dukein: I was using Knoppix on my girlfriends laptop pc. I tried to boot it from the mac, but it didn't work. I also tried to install Debian because I heard it was the best distro for ppc, but the install kicked my azz. (The partitioning was impossible. I've been booting Yellow Dawg just long enough to erase the hard drive, then shutting down and rebooting with Mandrake. Probly not good for the computer, but it's worked so far :D).
Thanks to FuzzyGnome for the link and again thanks to all who've helped me through this.
:newbie:

FYI - Yellow dog is a PPC (mac) version of linux, and runs smoothly on my g4 IMac, no issues to ever speak of. However, Ive never had this issue with a mac, and Im guessing it might be the battery on your mobo that needs to be replaced. I dont know much about ppc hardware, but on an x86 that would fix the issue.

johnny longside: what you're going through sounds exactly what I am except I'm on a pc. all my hardware is compatible, and mandrake 9.2 installed fine, but... i can't get ANYTHING to install. I tried AIM, yahoo messenger, java sdk, and endless other things. I've followed the steps for all of them exactly (logging in as root changing to the correct directories in the console and all.. ), but there always seems to be SOME error. It's pretty frustrating. I'm not the fondest of microsoft, but windows is way more user friendly, i gotta give em that. The only thing i didn't have trouble with was installing the mandrake OS! Now i can't simply install a program! what is that about?

prosh0t: Check out Easy Urpmi at the following URL

http://www.urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php

It will (almost) automatially set up your Mandrake Urmpi feature to use online Mandrake RPM respositries, so that installing common software is as simple as choosing "Install New Software" from the Mandrake Control Centre. URMPI will download and install any program and dependancies automatically. It doesn't have *every* mandrake RPM, but it will cover you for the most common stuff.

The site isn't as well maintained as it once was (they're looking for someone else to keep it up to date), so check the repositries before setting up your system. If you direct URMPI to a dead or unmaintained repositry, you won't be able to find or download anything from it.

Cheers,
Tim

proshOt,
The second post in this string from digiot helped quit a bit, actually. I'm starting to think rpms are fairly easy, just different than windows. The real issue are the libraries. I saw a post shortly after I installed Linux referring to library compatibilty as Linux's "dirty little secret." I didn't understand what he was talking about at the time. I do now. But the libraries are easy to find and install as well(as described above), there's just the extra hassle of tracking them down. Granted, like you I'm new at this and not everything has worked. Let me know if you find any good pointers.

johnnyLongside -

urpmi will become your best friend when installing rpms :-) Get to know it real well... it is seriously a miracle worker. For example, urpmi kernel brings up 21 results for 2.6.x kernels (up to 2.6.3-7). Notice at the end of the result it says mdk, which means Mandrake ;-)

I reccomend Gentoo. It's a very good distro for any application, including use on the PPC. It also doesn't have problems with dependencies since it builds all of the needed dependencies before compiling the package you want. I'm not sure if Debian does this, but I personally think that Gentoo is the best. It does have a pretty advanced installation process, but the installation guide explains everything in great detail (which makes it a great idea to print it out ;)).

i reccomend a hard drive install of knoppix or yellowdog...