Hi All,

I'm a newbie of sorts and I've just gone to 2007 from 2006 and getting all sorts of problems that I never had before.

The Mandriva package installer wont open for me. It did on first use and I selected a whole heap of packages to install from the disk.

Halfway through installation it popped up a message box telling me a checksum didn't match and I clicked the "Continue" button but I don't think this has relevance to my problem.

None of the packages installed and now when I try to open package installer it gets as far as "Checking database for available packages" then it closes again with no error messages.

Logged in as root (yes, in GUI!) everything works perfectly so I figure it must be a permissions problem.

Any reasonable suggestions appreciated. Errata below.

This is actually the fourth time I've installed 2007 in two days because of problems. The first was my own fault, my hdb1 partition was too small so I had to go back to 2006 and burn 40Gb of music and docs onto discs before repartitioning. Won't hurt to have all that backed up anyway.

Trying to install both Gnome and KDE desktops caused an "out of memory" error, this confused me a bit because I always had both installed before as far back as Mandrake 8.0

So I figured I'd try to install without Gnome and put it in later but Package Manager wouldn't open for me. I thought that it must have been because of another installation fault so I formatted and reinstalled again only to have the same problem still there.

Special thanks to people on this forum that explained how to login as root, if it wasn't for you I'd be ditching 2007 and complaining about it very bitterly. At least now I know it's only a permissions problem and not a software glitch. As a check I installed Grip as root user and it installed without a problem - other than the fact that now only root can use it.

I'm dual boot with Win98 for playing games on a Celeron 2.4 Ghz, 512 Mb ram and a cheap GFX 5200 video card.

I'm still not pleased with 2007, I thought it would give me less problems, not more. That new Menu Style selector really sucks, what was wrong with the old one?

Cheers,

Andrew.

Do an md5-check sum (search these pages for more) on the cd's and the iso if you have it.

Sounds like a download error or a bad burn to disk.

(edit)
On second thoughts/read, is your hd ok? No flaky behavior?

Still haven't worked out how to do this but will have a go, it's a disc from linuxcentral.org.


Although my computer is a hodge-podge collection of bits and pieces it runs sweet, the only real problem I'm having now is that my only user doesn't have access to some programs and I don't know how to fix this. Everything works perfectly when I'm logged in as root but to me this is not a safe way of operating.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

Cheers,

Andrew.

P.S. the check sum error showed while installing extra packages, not while installing Mandriva itself.

it still sounds sus, though. Can a user access the cdrom/dvd?

I think you can change permissions for program use while under the user login, But I generally

su to root mode (with gui in use) and call the program from the console. Like a run dialog.

It is safer not to be able to install products from user, unlike M$ windows where if my daughter installs

msn, irc or some other windows excentric chat program/hack-magnet, it is available to all and

sundry who use the PC by default.

MD5-check sums are available from the mirroring sites, and MD5-checkers are avail. after

a short search with your favorite search engine.

For windows: http://www.freewarepark.com/freeware/md5-checker.html

gnu md5-checker, found http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=e...G=Search&meta=

>>>>>>> this one for linux http://www.md5summer.org/

Good luck, I know I'd want to know my source was good, then I have something to work on.

Yes, my user profile can access both CD drives and all of my Microtoss partitions as well. Mostly it seems to work just fine except when it comes to Mandriva Control Panel. I tried to install the fonts from my Win98 and the window just closes on me and drops me back to the main panel, same deal as if I try to alter which services are running or install software.

Doing any of this whilst logged in as root works perfectly but when logged in as the user it falls over, even though I have to supply a root password to open Control Panel.

I only learnt that I can do this today, from this forum, open a program from a terminal that is. I've been playing with linux for a long time but that's all I've done until recently - play with it. In many respects I really am just a newbie. All of this permissions stuff has been frustrating for me to try and understand but I'll get there eventually.

LOL. Think I'll coin that phrase for next time I'm resurrecting my godson's Windows box.

Thank you very much for the checksum info, that'll get learnt and not forgotten.

I'm still convinced that my problems are permissions related however, because everything runs absolutely perfectly as root. I'm actually tired of playing with it today and I'm currently back in Win98 for a while but tomorrow I'll login as root and setup a new user and see if the new user still has the same trouble. If the new user has no problems then I'll have my favourite OS back again but I won't have learnt anything.

If you (or anyone else) could share what you know of setting user access permissions it really would be appreciated. I've tried reading HowTo's on the subject but some tell me to use 6's and 4's where others tell me 7's and 5's. Also how where and when to use these 6's or 7's is still confusing me. A bit of plain talk from someone using Mandriva is what I really need.

Thanks again for your help,

Andrew.

MCC should request your root password when you click on it. If it does not:

ALT+Click the menu button in kickker

Choose Menu Editor in the pop up menu.

In the menu tree (left), navigate to System / Configuration then select Configure your computer.

Click the Run as a different user check box and enter root in the Username: text entry field.

Click the Save button in the tool bar (top left).

Now when you run MCC, it should request your root password, and run with root permissions.

Even though you can make this change to any program, you should be careful to only set up those programs that actually require root permissions to do their work (such as MCC or the Software Installer). Making such changes frivolously could pose a security risk.

On my installation of Mandriva Free 2007.0, MCC requests my password even though I have not made this change to the menu ... hrmmm ... on the other hand, I did have to make such changes to the menu entries for the programs included with the old_rpmdrake package.

HTH,

Thanks for the info ernie, I didn't know this could be done.

MCC does request a root password on opening, even though I supply the correct password I still don't seem to have correct permissions. I've got the PowerPack edition by the way.

Very strange. I haven't been back to my Linux yet though, I just spent a day trying to console a friend that's being dragged through the horrors of the Australian Immigration Dept, 8 years of knock-backs even though we need more skilled tradesmen in this country.

All of this has been very useful information though and both you and GlennsPref have my heartfelt thanks.

Cheers,

Andrew

Going back to your original post:Perhaps there is a problem with the rpm database. You can repair the database with rpm in a terminal window as root:

rpm --rebuilddb

See if that helps. I do not think this issue is related to permissions since you can open the Software Installer, and it starts checking the database. If this were a permissions issue, you would not be able to open it.

If that does not work, you can remove your media sources with:

urpmi.removemedia -a

then set up new sources at Easy URPMI. Just follow the directions on the WEB page.

HTH,

For all intents and purposes I'm up and running properly now but still a little confused.

I had high hopes for this but no joy.

This seems like sound logic to me, I've got another idea about it now.

Tried this too but still had the same results. In the meantime my father had upgraded his 2006 to 2007 using a copy of the same disc I'm using and he didn't get the same problem. The only obvious difference I could see was that he'd upgraded from an earlier version where as I'd formatted and done a clean install.

So I formatted (hdb1 only) and installed 2006 from scratch, my desktop settings and some other parts of my user profile remained intact because hdb6 is mounted in /home and I always keep the same username. Everything runs as it should for me in 2006 so I get Grip running again and install Bladeenc and a few other packages as well. All is sweet so I put the 2007 disc in and reboot and Upgrade my installation.

Why is this version so bloody slow? Full install of 2006 takes 20 mins, upgrade to 2007 takes an hour an a half!

Upgrading finishes without a problem so I open Mandriva Control Centre and click on Install Packages. Mandriva is checking for available packages - then it closes on me again! Just as it did before. Aaaarrrgh!

Then I set up a new user. I find out that you now need to reboot after setting up a new user, if you try to switch user straight away you get the error: Could not open kdesetupconf

So I reboot then change to the new user and for the new user everything works perfectly, I can install packages, steal fonts from Windows, disable services, anything. But the original user can't.

So I figure one or more of that users configuration files must be corrupt. As stated above, for all intents I'm up and running but if anyone out there can help me to understand what's going on I'd really appreciate it.

And thanks again for all of your input so far, you've helped preserve what little sanity I have left.

Cheers,

Andrew.

And another quick question - whilst I've been on this forum my computer decided to start downloading something and has been going for about ten minutes now without slowing down, a constant 3.3 Kb/sec.

It's the first time this user has accessed the net.

What is it likely to be downloading and how can I check what it's downloaded? There must be a logfile somewhere but I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Now I'm confused, upset and very frustrated. I don't think 2007 is going to stay on my machine for very long.

My new login has just started behaving in the same manner as the old.

After I left this forum I had a play with the Menu Style Editor because some of the programs I'd installed weren't showing in the menu. I switched to the KDE default menu because in that menu you get and option to scan for unlisted (non KDE) programs such as the Gnome games that I like and my preferred terminal program then I switched back to the Mandriva menu. Logout and re-login is required each time.

I got that error message again: Could not open ksetupconfig and had to reboot.

Try to open Package Installer, Please wait while Mandriva searches the database for available packages - then the bloody thing just closes on me again.

So just to see what happens I browse the 2007 disc and double click on one of the Cedega rpm's. As expected it requests a root password and notifies me that it has to install 3 packages to satisfy dependencies. So far so good. Install seems to run properly and afterwards I find the shortcut for Cedega in the Kmenu and click on it. X restarts and dumps me back on the login screen. I repeated this 3 times, same result each time.

Yesterday I was playing FlatOut (poorly) without any problems.

Is there something incredibly basic that I'm overlooking here?

I'll try rebooting using the old kernel and see what happens.

Aaaarrgh!

Andrew

(update)Stupid me - I can't run under the old kernel because the nVidia module needs the new Kernel. I think I'll just revert back to 2006 until I can learn some more. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

This might seem odd, but bare with me, please.

When I first installed 2007, once it was all installed and rebooted and I had

reconfigured the desktop to look and behave the way I'm used to,

The frame that goes around any open window (with the minimise,

maximise and close buttons in the corner) disapeared.

I also had heaps of problems with mcc components.

Anyway, I read here someplace that deleting the ./kde file from /home was a cure.

Once again as you pointed out, a reboot is required because ./kde is updated to reflect

the status of the system.

It would seem that this file is only needed if you want to restore a previous session.

Make sense?

I haven't tried this for your situation but I might give it a go, I have nothing to loose and sanity to gain.

Cheers, Glenn

And it is indeed a cure. Thank you ever so much.

It made excellent sense. There's still some funny business going on but this is the first real progress I've made so far. There must be a couple more of these user configuration files that are either corrupted or in some way incompatible with the system but MCC now behaves *almost* normally.

When I click on the Install Packages link from the Kmenu it gives me the error: Could not open unknown "Install" program

But when I open MCC and click on the Install Packages link in there it opens properly and lets me install and uninstall in the proper manner. Thank you again.

When I click on System (in MCC) and Install Fonts and try to install some more fonts it appears to go through all the normal routines but the fonts just never appear in my system.

I tried playing FlatOut to see if that worked now but no joy, X restarts and dumps me back at the login screen. So I uninstalled Cedega and reinstalled it but still the same result. Then I uninstalled Cedega again and looked in my /home folder and a ./cedega folder was still there. Aaahh, I'll try this new trick out and deleted that folder before reinstalling Cedega but still the same deal. Could Cedega possibly have more than just the one config file. A quick browse of my /home folder showed that indeed it does but I wanted to jump back into this forum and let you know what's going on before playing with it any more. I'll let you know how it goes for me later on.

Is it safe for me to delete *any* of those config files in there or will I cause myself more problems? Not that it matters much because I was about to reinstall the whole bloody lot again anyway so I'll try that out too.

And Thank You again Glenn, once I get this sorted out I can get started on Dad's machine and his NT1-PlusII USB ISDN Modem. I've found quite a bit of info about that in here but too worried about my own issues at the moment.

Cheers,

Andrew.

I wouldn't go deleting files anywhere haphazardly, but i think I know what you mean.

What I mentioned above was a specific case involving kde desktop.

I was hoping that someone more knowledgeable would have pointed us/you in a more precise direction.

sorry, I'm stuck..

Glenn

(edit) P.S. Config files in /etc and /var, try "locate cedega"

It's OK, it's not like I rely on the thing for work. Figuring this sort of stuff out has been my hobby for years now and as long as I have backups I'm quite used to formatting and reinstalling. If you want to make an ommelette you have to break a few eggs.

I deleted *every* hidden file in /home for one user just to see what would happen and so far everything still works fine and most of those config files were recreated automatically as I suspected they would.

Now I'm curious as to how they were corrupted in the first place. For the last user I created they were fine to start with and I didn't play with too much before they were corrupted. At the moment I suspect the Menu Style Selector but I'll have to play a little more to find out for sure.

This would definately be appreciated.

Don't be sorry! You've been incredibly helpful. I may not have solved the problem but I believe that thanks to you I'm definately on the right path now.

Not only have you been helpful, you have also pre-empted my next question because after dumping every file that started with a . in my home directory and reinstalling Cedega it still restarts X and sends me to the login screen. Obviously when you uninstall Cedega it leaves a lot of stuff still in your system.

A bit like trying to get Yahoo back out of a Windows box

Thanks again for your help Glenn, and you too ernie.

Andrew.