Hi All,

I am very new to the linux environment - i am hoping to deviate as far as i can from the windows world. With that being said, I would like to ask for some help with my first problem:

My goal was to install a screen saver package to supplement what came with the Mandrake 10.0 distribution. I went to : jwz org (sorry, there was some weird URL prevention rule)
and downloaded the xscreensaver package and somehow managed to build it successfully..at least, i think.

My problem : There is no GUI found when i type in the command, "xscreensaver-demo"; in fact, this command isn't found at all when it should be somewhere on my system.

If anyone can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

you could try these sequence of commands as root:

updatedb &
locate xscreensaver-demo

did you uninstall the previous version of xscreensaver? i had a problem with that and after talking with jwz, he states that you should uninstall previous versions of xscreensaver if the previous version was installed via rpms or binaries.

I followed your suggestion and this was the output:

[root@localhost dale]# updatedb
[1]+ Done updatedb
[root@localhost dale]# locate xscreensaver-demo
/home/dale/bin/xscreensaver-4.18/driver/xscreensaver-demo.glade
/home/dale/bin/xscreensaver-4.18/driver/xscreensaver-demo.glade2
/home/dale/bin/xscreensaver-4.18/driver/xscreensaver-demo.glade2p
/home/dale/bin/xscreensaver-4.18/driver/xscreensaver-demo.man
/usr/local/man/man1/xscreensaver-demo.1

So now, i am still lost. I know for sure that I didnt uninstall anything before installing the xscreensaver package. Is it too late for me to start over? I have no idea how to decompile or remove the xscreensaver -4.18.. if you can help, again, i'd be in your debt.

Thanks

do this to check if u installed ---->xscreensaver

#rpm -qa | grep xscreensaver
xscreensaver-4.07-2

[*****the above output is on my computer]


the above command[ rpm -qa | grep xscreensaver] will return all the pacakges starting with the name --> xscreensaver

to uninstall it..

#rpm -ev xscreensaver-4.07-2

(-ev option is for removing the installed package with verbose on)

[xscreensaver-4.07-2 is installed on my system .. so im doing the above ... instead of that u should substitute with your output of the command [#rpm -qa | grep xscreensaver]..


good luck!!!

well, you don't really need to uninstall the new version of xscreensaver. you just need to uninstall your older version. you'll probably need to force the uninstall. try out this command:

rpm -e --nodeps xscreensaver

that will uninstall xscreensaver and ignore any other programs that depend on xscreensaver.

if you haven't done a make clean or deleted you extracted xscreensaver directory, you could cd into it and do a make install again. or just re-compile and make install xscreensaver again.

./configure
make
su
<enter root password>
make install

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions! However, i think i destroyed my mandrake somehow. I tried to re install the xscreen saver and discovered why i couldn't run the xscreensaver-demo - i didn't have gtk, glib, and other required libraries.. Luckily, my linux partition is quite expendable..I tried to install these libraries, but ran into various errors that seemed way too complex for me to understand. After these attempts, i couldn't boot into mandrake any longer and was forced to do a clean install again.

Learning how to use a new operating system is quite frustrating, especially when i've suckled the microsoft teat for so long. Right now, it appears that xscreensaver and i are not meant to be - there are all sorts of obstacles in my way.

thanks to everyone for trying to help me.

Frustrated and tired,
dalesan

well that's odd. did you do a minimal install? anyway, if you do decide to reinstall mandrake (or any other distro for that matter), always install development tools as that should get you those packages. those packages have always been on distros' install cds, but sometimes, you need to tell the installer to install those packages. for example in redhat 7.3, there was a checkbox for installing the development packages and the default was unchecked. i'm guessing other of the main commercial distros are similar. you'll probably need to just make sure you install all the packages necessary for being able to build from source code. also, i think it's a good idea to try to find an install guide for your distro and to read it before attempting an install.

Yes, very good advice. I did in fact ensure that the development package was checked during the install - I've installed mandrake 3 times now, ha ha. Despite having the development packages checked for install, i am still missing a lot of things.. Of course, I haven't "paid" for a mandrake membership yet so i guess i am not privy to all the packages - but i thought one could obtain everything one needed from the internet since linux is supposed to be completely open sourced.. I don't know, I guess i'll have to take things one step at a time.

maybe there's something i missed on the cds - perhaps i can fool around and see if there are any additional packages on the cds that could be installed.. So far, I don't have bc, gtk+, glib, pango, atk, and a bunch of other things that i probably need.

going to class now,
thanks