Installing .rpm and .tar.gz

The best I see is for 7.2:

ftp://mirror.fis.unb.br/pub/linux/Mandrake-old/

ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-old/

If you want to upgrade (somewhat, but not all the way to 10.0), these sites also have ISOs for 8.2-9.2 (but not 7.2, sadly, though there are some floppy images in the 7.2 folder. Don't know what you do with them, though. You might be able to do an "effective upgrade" to 7.2 by the simple expedient of upgrading the entire installed system from the repository, though).

Hope that helps somewhat.

I don't mean to belabor a point, but that little tutorial was amazing. I knew RPMDrake existed, but I had no idea how to get it to find anything but the files that came on the Mandrake install CDs, which was particularly annoying since I didn't have the 4th.

My troubles installing various programs that I found searching around the internet were immense and I certainly would have given up on Linux entirely if I wasn't dedicated to wasting my time this summer. Knowing about RPMDrake's capabilities and how to use them would have saved me a lot of effort and grief... too bad I didn't find this post earlier.

But I actually do have a question to post. Since there's an easy way to acquire and install programs, is there a similar system for hardware drivers? Or hardware recognition? I have some USB external hard drives and an iPod plugged into a PCI firewire card in my computer. The iPod doesn't appear at all in HardDrake (I think that's what it's called), and the external HDs claim to be read only file systems when I mount them. I'm just assuming they have problems because I don't have the drivers, but I guess it could be something else.

I'm sure this was the wrong place to post, so sorry about that. But thanks for the info again.

Well, I think I know why there aren't any repositories for 7.0 : urpmi wasn't
finished yet and didn't have commands like urpmi.addmedia or the search
commands that you use from the commandline. I tried getting the urpmi rpms from
version 7.2 and installing them with package manager, and after installing a lot
of libraries, rpm, and rpm-tools packages, it looked like everything was
upgraded without dependency-problem error messages. But urpmi won't run at
all now, and I get this error message:

Can't locate rpmtools.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
/usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-linux /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005/i386-linux /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.005) at
/usr/bin/urpmi line 20. BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/bin/urpmi
line 20.

There is no longer a man page for urpmi.

Thanks to anyone who can help me fix this.

Well, you could try reinstalling Perl and all Perl modules (you'd probably have to do some research to find out what Perl modules you have or need), but what I would do is get one of those 8.2 or 9.2 ISOs and do an upgrade install.

Unless you have some deep need to run Mandrake 7.2, moving to a somewhat better-supported version would seem to be the thing to do.

Just my 0.02, fwiw.

Yes, that's what I'll do. I wanted to tinker around and learn how to do some things on this old install in the meantime. I'll try the perl suggestion and see what happens. Thanks again.

Originally posted by motub But OK. I will explain this again, because I'm on a (minor) mission to save Mandrake from itself . Other than this really unnecessary problem for new migrators, it's a fab distro. ........... Hope this helps.

Agree - it does help a lot!

the urpm part should really be on the front page of the first startupscreen or at least on the front of the documentation page that appears when you start Mandrake the first time - it just saves so much time and annoyances.

And the part about the gpg keys was info that I didn't find before - and I have spent quite some time wondering and searching - Thanks

Then if you could add something more to this tutorial - I think it would be fab too:

I find some info about how to uprade mandrake via urpmi, but I find that it may not be so easy as it just appears at first sight.

Specifically there may be some issues when upgrading the kernel - there may be potential error in configuring lilo or other things that could make your box unbootable - or what?

There should not be many, if any, issues when upgrading a same-series kernel to a higher revision of its own type-- meaning, upgrading 2.4-22 to 2.4-31 or 2.6.7-13 to 2.6.7-15, or even 2.6.7 to 2.6.8 (I just made those revisions up; so don't go looking for them ). At least, as far as I know-- I don't remember having any problems with that, but the last version of Mandrake I used was 9.2, which only had 2.4 series kernels available.

You definitely have the potential for problems if attempting to upgrade a 2.4-series kernel directly to a 2.6-series kernel automatically (or even manually, at times).

The 2.6-series kernel has some radical differences from the 2.4-series, needs new tools to be built, and is in fact built with different commands than the 2.4 series (several of the kernel compilation commands used by the 2.4-series have been merged into one, so compiling a 2.6-series kernel only takes 3 commands, rather than the 6 or 7 required by the 2.4-series). While the 2.6 series is stable and works well, the initial transition from the 2.4-series can be (quite) bumpy.

A big clue is that all the major distributions (SuSE, Mandrake, Fedora) all released new versions to accommodate the 2.6-series kernels, and if you look in their repositories, you generally won't find a 2.6-series kernel for the previous release. The exception is Slackware, whose 9.1 version did accommodate the 2.6-series without upgrading (10.0 wasn't even available at the time, actually). One could obviously compile a 'vanilla' kernel from www.kernel.org, but given that distribution kernels are heavily patched and tweaked, I myself would not try this-- if the distribution can't successfully backport a newer kernel to an older release (which they clearly can't, or there would be such a precompiled kernel in the repositories of their old release), I certainly don't think I can. This is a point in the favor of just doing a clean install of the upgraded version (Mandrake 10.0, in this case). Just install the 2.6 kernel from the start rather than trying to migrate.

As for LiLO-- I admit I don't remember enough about how Mandrake upgrades their kernels to remember how they did lilo.conf-- it depends somewhat on whether they automatically replace the old kernel, or place it side-by-side with the previous kernel. And of course, one might be using GRUB, anyway, in which case all bets are off.

Naturally, if they replace the old kernel, and the new kernel is not bootable for whatever reason, you won't be able to boot, but that's not actually a LiLO problem.

I would assume-- in the absence of specific memory-- that Mandrake runs the "make install" command at the end of the kernel extraction, which "moves" the target of the /boot/vmlinuz symlink to point to the new kernel, and creates a new symlink (vmlinuz.old) which points to the previous kernel. Perhaps it additionally edits lilo.conf as well (or instructs you to do so), to add the new entry; whether it does or not, Mandrake surely runs /sbin/lilo (or instructs you to do so) at the end of the install. That's only basic common sense.

On the whole, it seems to me that LiLO is the most unlikely element to be an obstacle when upgrading a kernel automatically. There are so many more important obstacles before LiLO even becomes a factor.

As for upgrading the distribution as a whole using urpmi, well, it can be done, but as you say, it's often not as easy as it looks.Now that there is a stable upgrade release, it is certainly possible to point your SSM to the 10.0 repositories and then do an system-wide upgrade.

But there are two problems with this (leaving aside the kernel factor):

1) the programs in the new repository were compiled with different compilers and libraries than the ones currently resident in memory on your running system, so the new programs may not install properly (because they can't find the libraries they expect or need). Worse yet, many of the upgraded programs may appear to install correctly, while not actually doing so, and trust me, if you upgrade the whole system this way, when it's all over you will not be able to find the ultimate source of the brokenness, and will probably wind up having to reformat and reinstall;

2) you'd be in the position of trying to replace programs that are currently running, which many programs do not like. Upgrading RPMDrake while you're actually using RPMDrake to upgrade RPMDrake is a recipe for disaster. This is why it's better to just download the next release and do an upgrade install (if upgrading the kernel is not a factor) because then, you're running from the CD, not from your HDD, so the base functions can be replaced without damage. Plus, if you ever have to reformat and reinstall, you can just reinstall the current version, instead of having to upgrade the old version all over again.

Hope this helps answer your questions-- some of them, at least.

Various replies.
As a relative Mandrake noob, I am easily annoyed by urpmi.
Its great when the friggin mirrors stay up but they often get bogged down or deny access for whatever reasons.

I'd rather use easy urpmi for only larger updates not individual files. If you are checking kde-look or other sites with user created relatively new files they won't be on rpm yet anyway. I use the tar commands because its also a little more useful tool across various platforms. I dont want to trap myself in just linux, much less only mandrake linux.

For the other stuff: Use man tar and you will get the options. The most common uses are detailed above anyway. Use the v for verbose so you see what the heck is going on. Use j for the bunzip files (bz)instead of the z for gunzipped ones(gz).

Make sure you su to root before running this stuff or you will have errors.

Originally posted by smiler Agree - it does help a lot! the urpm part should really be on the front page of the first startupscreen or at least on the front of the documentation page that appears when you start Mandrake the first time - it just saves so much time and annoyances. And the part about the gpg keys was info that I didn't find before - and I have spent quite some time wondering and searching - Thanks Then if you could add something more to this tutorial - I think it would be fab too: I find some info about how to uprade mandrake via urpmi, but I find that it may not be so easy as it just appears at first sight. Specifically there may be some issues when upgrading the kernel - there may be potential error in configuring lilo or other things that could make your box unbootable - or what?

Lilo will keep a failsafe mandrake boot of the older kernel.
My current Lilo shows 6 options including the dos/windows selection and 5 versions of mandrake including kernels 2.4 and 2.6.

Again my only complaint with urpmi is that the mirrors at times crap out. The one in my state was actually taken off the list it became so unreliable. FWIW the French mirrors are extremely reliable. Then again with an 8 hour TZ difference guess no competition for connections. lol.

As a relative Mandrake noob, I am easily annoyed by urpmi. Its great when the friggin mirrors stay up but they often get bogged down or deny access for whatever reasons.

What I often do is get the RPM, usually a Mandrake specific RPM, and download it. (I find it with RPMseek, RPMfind, or RPMpbone.) Once it's on my hard drive, I can use

urpmi ~/downloaded_rpms/MyDownloadedRPM-3.4.7.2543.2-mdk325.rpm

or something like that, and urpmi will still automatically resolve dependencies.

Also, if you keep encountering a mirror not staying up, you are free to add more sites (see the EasyURPMI site for how to add sites, but since you already set up mirrors, you should already know how to do this) and if one mirror is down, urpmi will go to another mirror.

Incidentally --motub is female? I thought we scared all of those away! And a guru, too... we are not worthy ...

First and foremost here is another thanks to motub
i had been using mandrake for a good few months before i stumbled across this thread. Makes me think how long it would have taken for me to find out otherwise.

ok anyway i have installed the mandrake 10 official cd 1-3 and do not have the 4th
when i used easy urpmi and added those links did it not add the rpms from the 4th cd?
if it did how do i get my machine to use the online rpms instead of asking me for the fourth cd the whole time?

do i need to remove one of the .cs files in /var/lib/urpmi
eg. the hdlist.Installation CD 4 (x86) (cdrom4).cz or
names.Installation CD 4 (x86) (cdrom4) or
synthesis.hdlist.Installation CD 4 (x86) (cdrom4).cz

or what must i do?

thanks
graham

You should be able to edit the sources used via the Software Media Manager; just check and uncheck the sources you want to use.

Now, if some programs installed from external sources have dependencies which would be called from CD4, and those rpms are not on the mirrors (but only on CD4), then you would have a problem until you got CD4.

But since, iirc, CD 4 was the 'contrib' mirror, as long as you set up an external 'contrib' repository source, you should be able to get the packages needed without trouble. When you set up repositories via EasyURPMI, did you check the 'contrib' box to get a contrib mirror, or just 'main'? You really need both, especially if you have any PLF sources.

I'm not sure that I would go messing with /var/libs/urpmi, since urpmi is an automated process, and it is unknown whether changes to it directly will revert on reboot due to the SMM resetting them, or some other boot process resetting them (this happens a lot on SuSE, and Mandrake may be no different in that respect, given that both distributions are targeted for users who would not even know where to find internal configuration files such as urpmi's *.cs files, much less know how to edit them, and manual editing of most config files is discouraged anyway).

Hope this answers your question.

Oh, and you're welcome-- glad the other post helped.

hi thanks for the prompt replay

i have added the contrib mirror i actually added all of them

it infact asked me for whichever cd it needed not just cd4.

i am trying this on my laptop at the mo and also have another machine i am using as a server. it worked perfict on the server

maybe i should dl the cd4 anyway cos i'm not always connected to the net

does mandrake ask for the cd if it cannot connect to the net?

The reason it asks for the CDs is because it needs base libraries that are on the CDs, not necessarily because you are or are not connected to the 'Net. Generally, it probably asks for the closest source of the package it needs; if there is more than one source, and one of those sources is local (the CDs) it would ask for those first, and only move to external sources if no local sources were available.

If you really want to use no local sources whatsoever, you can uncheck all the CDs in the SMM. But if you're not always connected to the 'Net, this will mean that you won't be able to install anything at all when you are not... and even with the local sources enabled, you won't be able to install much other than what is on the CDs (because you aren't connected to the 'Net to retrieve external files).

I have a problem and is kind of urgent, so i beg someone to answer. I've just installed Linux (today) and i need to install yahoo messenger. BUT, i don't know how. I loged in as root and i wrote the path (for example: rpm -i /home/alexe/desktop/rh9.ymessenger-1.0.4-1.i386.rpm >the file is placed on desktop<) but the message is: "no such file or directory". What should i do? [alexe@localhost alexe]$ someone told me that it should be there # not $. It's true? or it affects me in some way?