Okay....this isn't as easy as I thought. I am trying to migrate to Linux and so, I downloaded and installed Mandrake Linux 10, used EasyURPMI to grab mirros and updated my system, etc. Now, I try to install amaroK RPM (it's an audio player) and I'm getting dependency problems left and right.

First, I try and find a precompiled amaroK RPM for Mandrake and I found this: amarok-1.0.1-1mdk.i586.rpm. I downloaded it and double-clicked it hoping it'd be as easy as Windows but I get this message:
----------------------------
Some package requested cannot be installed:
amarok-1.0.1-1mdk.i586 (due to unsatisfied libgstreamer-0.8.so.1)
do you agree ?
----------------------------

Err...I thought the system was smart enought to solve these dependency issues but I thought to myself...no problem, I try to look up libgstreamer rpm but I get a ton of results with libgstreamer-blahblahblah with different suffixes and architectures. I have no clue what I should download so I try an RPM: gstreamer-0.8.3-2.i386.rpm and

-----------------------------
Some package requested cannot be installed:
gstreamer-0.8.3-2.i386 (due to unsatisfied glib2[>= 2.3.0])
do you agree ?
------------------------------

Now at this point I'm not even going to try and hunt down any glib2 rpms as I'm sure something is awfully wrong. I shouldn't have to hunt down these dependencies manually should I? Mandrake was supposed to be easy.

So, can anybody tell me what I did wrong or what I should do? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

if you have setup your urpmi sources, you install the programs you want through the Mandrake Control Center software module (rpmdrake) and that will also install any dependencies. If you manually download rpms on to your system, then you are not using urpmi.

Thanks for the reply. So, my next question would be, is there any easy way to track down dependencies of RPMs outside of URPMI? I don't know enough about Linux to really know what packages I need to install when they spit out random filenames that are missing from my system.

The reason for having urpmi is that you don't worry about the dependencies, the system installs them for you. If you don't want to use urpmi or some other automated software install or update method, then it means you have to hunt down all the packages required on the web or compile them yourself. Linux has many tools e.g. "urpmi" on Mandrake, "apt-get" on Debian, "yum" on Fedora for resolving dependencies for you and installing them. The reason why you have dependencies is that some software requires other software or libraries to work because most packaged linux software does not include shared libraries or other packages, in RPMs etc, to prevent duplication of files on the system which can cause conflicts between packages.

I do understand what dependencies are and why they exist and I DO want to use the package management system (in my case, urpmi) very much. It so happens though that some applications just aren't included in my urpmi tree and sometimes versions in the tree are outdated from what is currently available. This forces me to have to hunt down the RPM manually and that's where the trouble comes in and I'd like to know how people can run the latest software while getting around these dependency problems.

Personally, if I can't find a package I want through urpmi i.e. the urpmi packages are not new enough, I either use RPMs from Mandrake Cooker, which are bleeding edge so can cause your sytem to be unstable, or I compile the software from source, which can be a pain sometimes but worthwile in the end.

one thing you can do if you want to use non mirror rpm repositories to help resolve dependency issues.............

(this is kinda roundabout, but if you're not gonna use rpmdrake in MCC, there's no other way to deal with dependency issues.)

first, set up a local source for all of your rpm downloads. to do this, create a directory (preferably in /home somewhere) for your rpm's. name the directory (like, myrpms, for instance). go to Mandrake Control Center (MCC for short)->software->media manager. click on the "add" button. choose the 'local source" option at top, give it a name, in "path" browse to your rpm folder, leave the "path to hdlist......" box blank, click "save" (or "add", or "apply", whatever the button is. going from memory here). once it's done saving you will now have a source for your local rpms & you can now use the software installer in MCC to install them. then, if it runs into depency issues it will search all your sources to find the needed dependencies. you should have a "contrib", "main", & "plf" source set up. if you have all those, chances are most dependency issues will be covered. you might also want to set up a "cooker" source, but use those with caution. "cooker" apps are usually works in progress & can be very buggy & sometimes system unfriendly. use EasyURPMI to set up those sources if you don't have them already.

some more useful info........

you need to update your sources from time to time. for instance, if you download a new rpm & put it in your rpm folder, the data base will have to be updated for rpmdrake (& urpmi) to recognize the new package(s). you should do this periodically. to do so, in a terminal as root type the following........ (hit enter after each command & all the following need to be done as root)

to install a package...........

if you want to test a package out to find what dependencies it might need, do the following........(this will only test install the package, not actually install it)

if you want to force install a package, dependencies be damned...... (not recommended, but sometimes it works)

if you want to remove a package............

for a in depth look at urmpi usage, type man urpmi (hit enter) in terminal as root.

hope this might have helped.

otis

Thanks everyone, those replies were very helpful. Indeed, I just added the Cooker repositories to urpmi in addition to my original Mandrake 10 and CD sources and it seems it does have a few newer applicaitons (such as Firefox 0.9.x -> which broke on me ). That adding my personally-downloaded rpms to the database is also a great suggestion, although I'd still have to manually come up with any dependencies myself if they are missing from the urpmi tree. Anyhow, my system is slowly building up to be useable now and hopefully it'll replace Windows one day if I get used to it enough.

true. there's no getting around it if the sources you have set up don't have the needed packages (dependencies). but, if you use the urpmi --test command i posted above, it will tell you what depends you need from which you can make a note of & search for them elsewhere.

and, as i stated earlier, be careful with cooker apps & use them at your own risk. cooker apps are works in progress & go through many changes until they are considered final/stable. if you're going to use cooker apps, i'd highly suggest staying away from any major system dependant ones (like KDE, Gnome, other DE's, Xfree & X-org, QT & GCC libraries, etc.). things can & often do go wrong with cooker apps & if you're not prepared to fix your system if/when it breaks, then use with caution.

otis

All the above is well and good, but what if rpmdrake itself is the file that urpmi won't install because it depends on files that are too new? That's the problem I'm having at the moment. (Long story.) [Note: urpmi --test only told me that rpmdrake was in the repositories but wasn't installed. Should it have told me more?]

Seems to me that in an open source culture, it ought to be possible to find out all the dependencies for any given package. Don't developers have such an option?

Thanks.

Another point you may be missing is that (at least for the current final release version of Mandriva - 2009.1) the packages in the Mandriva repositories are regularly back ported to include the latest security and bug fix patches. Often the most current features are included as well, providing they do not break the system, so a packag's version number may not match the latest release from the dev's WEB site, but any patches or improvements will usually be included with what you get from Mandriva. In the interest of accuracy, I have noted a few exceptions to this rule of thumb, one of which is Mozilla Firefox. Another exception seems to be KDE3.x, for which 'unofficial' repositories are available on the KDE mirror of your choice.

HTH,

See "man urpmq"

Jim

This should never happen - if it is then most likely your software sources are stuffed up. To fix:

Thanks, Jim. uprmq works nicely, though a dependency tree (network?) would be nice. Didn't know there was a uprmq. I'll have to spend more quality time with man!

And tkedwards, also thanks. The machine runs smoothly now.

Regards.

When I made my first post in this thread, I did not read the entire post, just the last few messages - shame on me for not taking the time to thoroughly understand the issue . . .

There is one bit of information I missed before - The O.P., JesterMania installed Mandrake Linux 10. (S)He would be better served to migrate to the new Mandriva release when it is released in November. It will be labeled Mandriva Linux 2010.0. In 2005, Mandrake Linux merged with Conectiva Linux and became Mandriva Linux. If you have a recent computer with ample resources, KDE-4.x will give great beauty and reasonable performance. If you have a vintage system, choose the LXDE Desktop Environment because it is intended for use in limited resource environments.

Mandrake Linux 10.0 was released in the fall of 2009 and Mandrake Linux 10.1 was the transitional release, also known as Mandriva Linux 2005, and was released in Spring 2005. Both releases have been past their End of Life for quite some time. Their software packages are no longer being updated against new security threats. For this reason alone, it is imperative that you upgrade or update to a supported release version.

Another bit of advise I take exception with is the use of ANY cooker package in a production system. The cooker repositories are intended only for development and testing purposes. These packages are unstable and should not be used in a production system. You are probably not having any trouble now, because the Mandriva cooker repositories are frozen while the developers polish things up and get ready to publish the 2010 release next month. After that, development will resume, and the developers start working on the Spring release. New, unstable packages will replace what you see now, and if you install them, very bad things could start happening, from issues as light in severity as application crashes, to issues as severe as system or data corruption.

My best advise, resulting from more than ten years experience as a Mandriva Linux user, is to wait for the Mandriva Linux 2010.0 release, and install it.

Get rid of the cooker repositories so the only updates you see come from the stable repositories.

Set up three partitions for Linux:
A system (/) partition (mine is about 10GB)
A swap partition (2GB here)
A /home partition (make it as large as you can)

When you install the next Mandriva release, you can do an install rather than an update, and your user settings will be preserved on the /home partition while you will get a 'clean' install to the system partition.

The one caveat with this approach is that if you add packages after the initial installation, keep a list of them so you know which additional packages to install following installation of the next release.

I am an old timer, so I use a note book to keep a log of all my installation / update / upgrade activities. The one advantage of this is that if I suffer a HD crash, my log will not be destroyed.

HTH,