I installed Mandriva Free 2007.0 (official) from the Internet. When a new version is released, I go to the ftp mirror I use, and get the new boot.iso file from the install directory on the mirror:

~/MandrivaLinux/official/2007.0/i586/install/images

I boot my computer with the disk I burn (about a 12.5 MB .iso image), and do an ftp install. The sources on the mirrors are always very complete so I avoid issues with missing packages, and I do not have to put a CD or DVD in the drive when I start the package manager. I save the time required to download the three or four CD images (or the DVD image) as well as the time to burn to disk(s). The only software downloaded is the boot.iso image file, the installer, the media source information (hdlist.cz) files, and the packages that are to be installed. The Main and Contrib media sources are set up by the installer so all I have to do is set up the additional sources I use such as plf.

Back to your issue:

Did you install aspell when you installed Mandriva? It should have been a default installation package because so many packages need it.

Did you install aspell from a .tar or a .tar.gz file (from source)? If you did, that may be the trouble since the source package may not place files in the same location as the Mandriva packages. If you installed aspell from a source package, check the documentation in the source package to see if there are directions for removing the package. If there are, remove it. If you installed aspell from a non-Mandriva rpm package you should remove it. Then use rpm as root, in a terminal window to remove the Mandriva aspell packages:

rpm -e --nodeps aspell-0.60.4-3mdv2007.0
rpm -e --nodeps libaspell15-0.60.4-3mdv2007.0
rpm -e --nodeps aspell-en-6.0.0-2mdk
rpm -e --nodeps aspell-or-0.03.1-1mdk.i586

If you have Internet media sources set up, you can try to reinstall aspell with urpmi:

urpmi aspell

If you do not have Internet media sources set up for your computer, I strongly suggest you do so. The easiest way to set up these sources is to go to Easy URPMI.

Select your Mandriva version and architecture and click the 'Proceed to step 2' button.

In step 2, there are a total of ten sources to be set up. Click the drop down list for each of the ten sources and select a mirror (as near to you as possible). Click the 'Proceed to step 3' button.

Step 3 contains ten urpmi commands which will set up the Internet sources for you. Each command begins with urpmi.

Open a terminal window.

su to root.

Remove all media sources currently installed:

urpmi.removemedia -a

a). Highlight the first command in the WEB page.

b). Copy it to the clipboard.

c). Paste it to the terminal window with your mouse.

NOTE: To paste anything to a terminal window, you must <ALT+Click> the terminal window, and select the 'Paste' option in the pop up menu.

d). Press <ENTER> to execute the command.

Repeat this procedure for each of the other nine commands.

HTH,

Thanks Ernie for the great rundown, most appreciated.

Have tried #urpmi aspell again - just comes back 'The package (s) are already installed'

Did think about uninstalling #aspell and then reinstalling. But it has to remove so many

dependencies I thought better of that, just in case it broke the box.

Think my best plan is to do a reinstall and see if that will cure the problem.

Will do as you suggest about getting the new boot.iso from the ftp, that's a great idea. It should

certainly cut down on the downloading time.

By the way, did not install any .tar #aspell files, the only one I did download was the RPM #aspell-en

which was missing. Got that info from Wildar who gave me the link.

OK Ernie, many thanks for all your help again. Expect you must be getting fed up of this thread now. Hi.

Will spend some time downloading the new boot.iso and installing that, will add a message when it's been done

so that you can see if all your excellent info has been put to good use.

I really am indebted to you for you time and attention. Many thanks once again.

Best Regards

It seems a shame to re-install your system over a spell checking issue. Just want to make sure you saw that the four commands to remove the aspell packages were rpm commands, not urpmi commands.

The --nodeps flag tells rpm to just remove the package and ignore any dependencies. Since you will reinstall aspell, this should not be an issue.

Sorry nothing we have tried has helped so far,

If you haven't reinstalled everything yet, running this command will tell you which dictionaries you've got installed:

aspell dump dicts

Just to be clear on exactly what you've got.