Re: Approaching extreme frustration

GofBorg adjusted his/her tin foil beanie and asbestos underwear to
write:

> I've been tinkering with YaST on and off for three days
> now and I still cannot get it to recognize any installation
> locations. This thing is completely botched. you cannot
> even launch the Install and Remove Software app if there isn't
> a location available, it just silently dies. If I add the CD or
> DVD player as a source it launches the installer app but when you do
a
> search for an app to install it returns nothing. There is nothing
> wrong with the drive since I can burn CD's just fine.
>

There appears to be something wrong with your install then, Yast works

fine on all the machines here with 9.2 on, ranging from a lowly K6 II450 right upto my 64bit machines.

I can add and remove install sources and change the locations on the
fly.

Have you tried re-installing the Yast packages to see if you have
something missing/b0rken?

The one thing you could try is:-

After you set the install source to the dvd/cd and put the disk in,
unmount the drive and see if it works then, it could be probs with the

subfs mounting the disk automatically.

Also if you have plenty of free space just copy across the whole
contents of the disk to a dir marked 9-2disk or something, keeping the

tree intact and then point Yast to the dir, lot quicker than the dvd
and saves having to keep putting it in therefore stopping it getting
scratched.

HTH

--
Mark
Novell Support Forums SysOp
Twixt hill and high water
N. Wales, UK.

Ah were should I begin. I've compressed my responses to all of your
questions into this one post.

> There appears to be something wrong with your install then, Yast
works
> fine on all the machines here with 9.2 on, ranging from a lowly K6
II
> 450 right upto my 64bit machines.

I've done nothing "exotic" with YaST. If you look back a few days
worth of
posts in here, the last thing that I did successfully was add the
"packman"
as a source for getting I think it was the mplayer stuff. That went
without a hitch.

Now I want to point out at this time that this is a problem that I
have now
replicated. This is the second time where I've added an install
source in
YaST and then thereafter could not access anything. I'm not sure what

happens to cause this.

> Have you tried re-installing the Yast packages to see if you have
> something missing/b0rken?

No, and I'm not sure how I could even do that since no installer is
functional at this time. I'd have to track down the YaST package and
every
dependency probably to get it installed.

>
> The one thing you could try is:-
>
> After you set the install source to the dvd/cd and put the disk in,> unmount the drive and see if it works then, it could be probs with
the
> subfs mounting the disk automatically.

I will try this next.

> Also if you have plenty of free space just copy across the whole
> contents of the disk to a dir marked 9-2disk or something, keeping
the
> tree intact and then point Yast to the dir, lot quicker than the dvd

> and saves having to keep putting it in therefore stopping it getting

> scratched.

Problem with that is I've tried copying stuff to the disk and
installing
with YaST from there but it does not accept the install source
location.

>What is so complicated about apt?

Please. There is virtually no documentation that applies to SuSE and
I find
what does exist to be either inaccurate, out of date or obtuse to
follow.
I'm not even complaining about USING apt at this point, I'm just
talking
about getting it installed. So far I've had to track down and
install:

perl-XML-Namespace
perl-XML-SAX
perl-XML-libxml
perl-XML-libxml-common
libxvt2
and on and on. At this point Synaptic won't install because it p****
and
moans that apt needs to be greater than 0.5. I've installed 0.61!

>>What I have in mine (DVD) is this:

>>Â*Â*Â*dvd:///;devices=/dev/hdc
>> edit to suit and see if it won't start looking at your media again.


I wish I could edit my dvd section to look like this but there seems
to be
no option in the GUI. I get either replace or refresh if you click
replace
all you get is a popup to click either DVD or CD. When it gets added
to
the source mine only looks like this: dvd:///
The disk spins for awhile, but you cannot install from it. I can
access the
disk contents from Konqueror without problems.


>>I also have an entry for a local dir where I download .rpms:

>>Â*Â*Â*dir:///home/big_folks/MyÂ*Downloads/
Once again YaST does not detect the contents of the directory.

>>I find that installing downloaded .rpms via YaST is a bit of a
crapshoot
Never had a problem until I added the packman site to the install
source.

Something is seriously wrong with YaST install source applet in SuSE
9.1

Do any of you know where YaST stuffs its configuration data?
Maybe I can peek in there and see what is wrong.

> After you set the install source to the dvd/cd and put the disk in,> unmount the drive and see if it works then, it could be probs with
the
> subfs mounting the disk automatically.

>>I will try this next.

This seems to be working. I am at least able to poll available
packages on
the DVD now.

GofBorg wrote:
>>What is so complicated about apt?
>
> Please. There is virtually no documentation that applies to SuSE
and I find
> what does exist to be either inaccurate, out of date or obtuse to
follow.
> I'm not even complaining about USING apt at this point, I'm just
talking
> about getting it installed. So far I've had to track down and
install:
>
> perl-XML-Namespace
> perl-XML-SAX
> perl-XML-libxml
> perl-XML-libxml-common
> libxvt2
> and on and on. At this point Synaptic won't install because it
p**** and
> moans that apt needs to be greater than 0.5. I've installed 0.61!

Hmm ... I am sorry that you had this bad experience with apt. I've
just
followed the instructions at
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/arti...ll_apt4rpm.php
and I didn't have any problems at all. I didn't have to install any
packages manually.

I've even tried to install synaptic this afternoon (I'm using the apt

wrapper script from the CLI) and I've succeded without any problems.

paradise:~ # apt --version
The version of this wrapper around the apt tools is: 0.22

The version of the apt tools is:
apt 0.5.15cnc6 for linux i386 compiled on Oct 16 2004 22:14:35

Synaptic is version 0.55.3.

Coming to SUSE from Debian, I have to say that apt4rpm really is a
bless!

--
Regards,
Stelian

siancu _AT_ gmail _DOT_ com

GofBorg adjusted his/her tin foil beanie and asbestos underwear to
write:

>> After you set the install source to the dvd/cd and put the disk in,

>> unmount the drive and see if it works then, it could be probs with>> the subfs mounting the disk automatically.
>
>>>I will try this next.
>
> This seems to be working. I am at least able to poll available
> packages on the DVD now.

Hi G,

I did not realise it was you when I first answered, otherwise I wouldhave remembered, I thought you might have got it working

If the un-mounting does help and you do not use the drives very oftenthen you can turn the subfs off in fstab and have the mounting done
the
"Good Old Reliable Way"(tm) by following the instructions here:-

http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...rom_subfs.html


The subfs can be a pain, I have it disabled straight away and just
have
the disk Icons on the desktop, a quick right click and Mount is all it

needs or just as quick is to mount from a console all depends on what
I
am doing, plus the fact I have cdrom door lock enabled so that once it

is mounted no stray fingers can eject the thing ( especially like nowwhen the grand kids are about )

HTH

--
Mark
Novell Support Forums SysOp
Twixt hill and high water
N. Wales, UK.