Hello,

I'm a Linux/Mandriva newbie, so forgive me if my question is too obvious. I'd like to install the latest version of KOffice on Mandriva 2005 LE, so I downloaded all .mdk.rpm files from the KOffice download site. I run the following conmmand (as instructed on the KOffice's website):

All I got was a slew of error messages about required dependencies, and I have no idea how to proceed.

I'd greatly appreciate it, if anyone could provide a newbie-friendly description of how to install KOffice on Mandriva.

Thank you!

Kind regards,
Dmitri

koffice should be on your install disk. Just go into the control centre and install it. Although if you've already got openoffice why bother?

Mandriva 2005 LE ships with KOffice 1.3.5, I'd like to install the latest release, which is 1.4.1.

As to why bother: I'd like to test the Kexi database component, among other things.

Kind regards,
Dmitri

Sometimes if you try to install a recent release of something it doesn't work properly if you don't have the right version of other packages as well. Perhaps something is clashing somewhere. I don't know if rpm's take care of upgrading other packages as well. Perhaps somebody else could help. I recently installed the latest version of k3b which just didn't work, so I went back to an earlier version which did.

Other things I can think of, is there a way to upgrade your existing package of koffice, if you have it installed. I think you can upgrade rpm's. Otherwise, try a package from somewhere else. pbone has koffice 1.4.0.01 if that's any good. How large was the package you downloaded from koffice.org? Did you get it all?

dmpop, whenever I install packages for Mandriva I tend to just get them from urpmi ie off the disk or from the official mirror. So I'm not all that familiar with the rpm commands. However using the -U option is for upgrading a package. Therefore I assume you need to have an earlier version already installed. If you haven't, that could be the problem. The man page lists all the options.

edit: forget that, -U doesn't require that.

try instead
RPM doesn't do any dependency resolution but urpmi does. So assuming the necessary dependencies are in the repositories for mandrake (you have setup access to the FULL main, contrib and PLF repos haven't you? http://easyurpmi.zarb.org) it will find them and install it.

If that doesn't work please post the error messages here so we can see what depedencies it actually needs.

simcox1 "rpm -U" installs and upgrades packages. "rpm -i" will only install packages if a previous version has never been installed, so using "rpm -U" is a lot better than using "rpm -i".

I think the koffice rpms you downloaded are for cooker (Mandriva development branch) and will complain of missing dependencies because they depend on newer packages that are not available on your system. You can work round this problem by going to easyurpmi, configuring the main and contrib repositories for cooker(give them different names so that they don't clash with your current main and contrib repositories). Once thats done, do
When koffice has been installed disable or remove the cooker repositories so that they are not used when you need to install stable packages.

I've downloaded the complete Koffice 1.4.1 to my hard drive.
This is what I did:
[root@localhost koffice]# urpmi koffice-1.4.1-1mdk.i586.rpm
Some package requested cannot be installed:
koffice-1.4.1-1mdk.i586 (due to unsatisfied koffice-krita)
Continue? (Y/n)

I clicked no and then used
urpmi koffice and it downloaded and installed version 1.3.3.
How do I use urpmi to install this specific version rather than the older version that is showing up in my urpmi database? (mine also shows 1.3.3)
Any way to update it?

I think I'm missing some basics of installing rpms here.

Most rpms, especially for fairly big and complex stuff like office suites, will have dependencies - stuff that the program relies on in order to function. urpmi is a system (similar to yum or Debian's apt) that automatically resolves dependencies using repositories of software. However if you install a newer version of a package sometimes it will require other software (or later versions of software) which is only present in a newer version of your distro (or not at all sometimes). This looks like what's happening here. Unless you have a good reason to use koffice 1.4 I'd just stick with 1.3 and it you will probably get the new 1.4 version when (or if) you upgrade to the upcoming release of Mandriva (2006). You should also make sure you've setup access to all the repositories at http://easyurpmi.zarb.org in case the depdency you need is in one of them.

RPM doesn't do any automatic dependency resolution so just going "rpm -Uvh somefile.rpm" isn't going to work unless all the dependencies are already installed or the package has no dependencies. However if you think you know what you're doing you can forcefully override the dependency checks and install the thing anyway:
Just be aware that by doing this you're taking your life into your own hands wrt to wether the program is stable or even works at all