Good advice mac57. 10.0 is similar except the multimedia pack updates from 9.3 don't exist in 10.0. Mplayer comes with a lot of codecs and probably make those packs unnecessary. Amorak is a good OP3 player. To be able to view Hollywood DVD movies you will require a little more. http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/ duplicates some of packman you will wand css decoder for movies. You may also want to get kmplayer, a GUI front end for mplayer and xine. It helped me with some configuration issues I had.

thanks all for the help. i have my .avi's playing now (just watched saw2!) and my mp3's are playing well too, although i can still only use realplayer for them. i am still working on amorak, but haven't had any luck with it. i have Xine, gstreamer, MadBrainer (? i think it was called) and a few others i forgot. i added xvid and divx, and the w32codec all package. i haven't tried mpg's yet, but i would think i now have enough codecs installed to get them to play, and i still really want to get away from RealPlayer10. i hate that thing. i must be missing something from Amorak, but i'll keep kicking away. now i am much more comfortable in the environment though and now understand where to go to add and how and where to search for things.
one final question to add out there: anyone have any luck, or guidance, on WINE? i have a few Wintel apps, one in particular, that i would like to try to crossover if possible. any horror/success stories from you guys on that?
thanks again,
jasma12

What apps in particular? I use CrossoverOffice.

Mac, thanks for laying that out for me; i'll try those today. also, XM9, i do have 2 of the 3 you mentioned (i forgot which at the moment) and will follow your reply too, thank you. anyone have a stalling problem with those repos'? i constantly have to SIGKILL the package updates and do them again because it just stalls at different points. i've another online repo for the Suse disks from unixheads, as well as the one from Packman, but i still stall alot. anyone having similar issues with this?

thanks, SPorks. well, just to try to make it work (i haven't had any luck with WINE yet, but i would be happy to try any. the one app i would like to try is an app called TimeCoder by InData. its nothing spectacular, it syncronizes mpg/avi's with deposition testimony. probably something out ther that does it already for linux, but i have this one on Wintel and use it daily. i've read man wine, but haven't had much luck the syntax.

I tried to use the above instructions and somehow misused them.

did this all right:

" we're going to add an Internet address that will replace your discs. That way if you need to add software from the CDs or DVD, you can get the packages from the Internet instead of putting a disc into your computer. If you need to, you can just as easily enable the CD/DVD source later.
Click the Add button, then click on HTTP in the popup menu. Add the following Internet address to the Server Name field and then click on OK:
packman.rsync.zmi.at/suse/10.0
If that repository link does not work, you can choose one of the mirrors from this list.
Now repeat this process and add the following servers to your installation sources using the FTP option instead of HTTP:
mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0-OSS/inst-source-java
mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0-OSS/inst-source
mirrors.kernel.org/suse/i386/10.0/SUSE-Linux10.0-GM-Extra "

but

" Now next to all of your new software sources, change the Refresh option to On.
You can do this by selecting each source and clicking on the Refresh On Or Off button. "

No, there was no such "refresh" option available anywhere.

" The default is Off, so you'll have to change all of the entries.
Without adding the preceding sources and ordering them to refresh, it will not be possible to follow the next three steps. You can now close the Installation Source window."

I went on to the next step and tried to open within YaST the package manager.
What I in fact clicked on was the option to install or remove software packages. Maybe that's the correct option, but it ran interminably. So long that I tried to interrupt it by clicking on the interrupt option in the dialog window. Nothing interrupted the process. I tried to kill the process with "kill" but that had no effect. Nothing in the dialog window responded. Meanwhile, the "clock" process icon continued to indicate the process was still in operation. After everything I could think of failed, I finally resorted to killing the main power. "Shutdown" and "halt" commands did nothing. The main window's disconnection menu option did nothing.

Now, after reboot, I find that YaST reports one or more conflicts with the Open Office package.

Can I resolve this without having to remove and reinstall (from an online update, the Open Office package?

And, are the above insntructions regardingn the jemreport Open SUSE work-around to make mp3-type devices operate no longer valid?

please help

Yast - Software - Installation source
On the resulting Software Source Media window the button directly above "Finish" is "Refresh On or Off".

As to time. Refreshing the Packman RPMs over the network takes a long time even with my 7MB connection. So long that I leave it off and disabled. Considering how many RPMs are on a SuSE install DVD, the time would be unbelievably long. Ergo, it may have been past your willingness to wait but it is probably working.

brico - i had trouble with those repos the first time i tried too. if you have suse 10, either a kde or gnome install, your refresh is in the bottom right of YaSt Install Source right on top of Disable/Enable. the first time i was doing this i noticed my YaSt windows were opening up slightly off-screen. do you have your screens maximized to see all the buttons? do you see Abort and Finish (or Accept) at the bottom right? hope this helps, but i do know i've uncovered alot of goodies from these repos. good luck!

jasma12 - that's a good point about the buttons being off screen. I usually move the windows to see if they're cut off but as you point out, maximizing does the job as well. Linux almost always has multiple ways to solve the same problem.

fragos and jasma,

thanks for your replies.

Thanks very much for your kind reply. I'm torn between hoping you're correct about the refresh button being there and, on the other hand, how very sadly absent-minded that means I must have been to miss it.

I'll look again. While I'm on the topic, of the said post's instructions, I should add that when I performed the grep for the packages (early in the procecedure) I got no return at the c-line. Thus, I guess I don't have the packages Jem listed to look up.

Thanks, too, for your comment on the matter of the OpenOffice.org2.0 conflicts. I take it from what you wrote that there is nothing necessarily to be worried about--or is that true _only_ if I perform the -F freshen rpm ? I haven't done that. At this point I'm more concerned about multiplying errors than by the risk of not doing anything.

Will reply in forum, too, with results.

as promised here are the results:

In the "Installation Support" dialog window as far as clickable key functions go, there are, just below the frame showing the various support options available, the following starting from the top and reading left to right:

Add Previous
Modify Next
Erase Activate /Disactivate

In the larger outer frame which pertains to the general YaST "Installation Support" there are only two option buttons:

left: Interrupt and right : finish

Perhaps more important, I cannot now replace the previously removed CD insntallation support. When I select "ADD" > CD ...
> "Impossible to create the insntallation source from the URL ' cd:///'.
Details: ERROR (Media: mount failed) Try again? "

I very much want to restore the cd-rom device as a source of installation since without it I can't boot or reinstall from my system CDs.

Cordially,
Brico

so, after looking high and low and expanding the window to its full size, I still don't find any button related to "refresh". Certainly not just above the clearly visible "finish" button.

I can't imagine that this would make any practical difference, but just for full disclosure's sake, my installation is in french. Still, there's no button which by any stretch of the language means "refresh".

BTW, my distrib is 9.3 but with recent updates from the "mother site". ;^)

Thanks again for replying.

Unlike SUSE 10.0, automatic refresh is not an option in 9.3. Here you have to run this function manually before you install the packages (Online Update -> Edit -> Refresh). However, this is only required for sources with changing content (like supplementary sources or packman). The 'standard' released-version source does not change and therefore does not have to be refreshed.

It appears from the chatter in this thread that you've used both Yast and command line (CLI). Many more seasoned Linux users recommend CLI, that's how they learned. I'm kind of in the middle on this. I've been a system programmer since 1964. Over 40 years is along time but I'm still a relative newbie in the Linux community. It appears to me that you have a miss configured system. Some of your problems might not exist if you depended more on Yast. I recommend the following:

1. get SuSE 10.0, its free on openSuSE.org. Don't be tempted to try 10.1 -- its not finished yet.
2. Use Yast for anything it can do for you. A single Yast configuration step might preform the equivalent of many CLIs. It also knows what directories to use and lots of other things you'll miss with CLI.
3. Initially use CLI to examine configuration data. Over time, as you understand more you can start to make some changes with CLI.
4. Get the basic system working without CLI.
5. Familiarize yourself with what you have before adding or changing lots of things.

There's no shame in using YaST. Go one step at a time. Come here for help but don't try everything your told. Be selective and look at multiple pieces of help before taking action with the one that you are most comfortable with.

Fragos

Well, there's no shame here about using YaST. Indeed, I'd _like_ to use it in preference to the CL interface whenever possible and esp when, as you point out, it does lots of things correctly and automatically which I as a beginner wouldn't know how to do. On the other hand, as abisko00's post above (#27) points out--and which wasn't till now known to me, the YaST in my distribution didn't present the refresh option as expected from Jem's notes.

Oddly enough, what Jem claims is required in order to follow his steps, abisko00 says I needn't worry about since the packages concerned are not going to require the "refresh" function in the process of this matter.

So, I dunno.*

Sure, I could I suppose install vers. 10.0 and may do that; it's just that at the moment, every time I attempt to adopt some "new and improved" feature, I wind up having done something which lessens the functionality of my existing set-up, or creates conflicts, or requires modifications the consequences of which I can't even guess.

I just wanted to implement the instructions set out in the jemreport's notes on getting mp3 and DVD functionality going--without, of course, messing up my system and creating problems where before there weren't any.

Thanks to all who've replied. I'll report on my progress whichever way it goes.

And thanks, too, for this advice,

"Come here for help but don't try everything your told. Be selective and look at multiple pieces of help before taking action with the one that you are most comfortable with."

I'll keep that in mind.

B.