Small Glitches on OpenSuse 11.0 Repositories?

[johannesrs]

Hi all!

First of al, I would like to apologize if this is the wrong place to report this kind of issues. Unfortunatelly, I could not find neither decide for a better place.

I’ve been making some deep installs for some desktop systems here, and among my experiences, I fould what can be considered a few glitches in some of the software found in the repositories.

Please, don’t take me wrong: I love opensuse. If I didn’t, these errors would not have been dealt with, but rather more become the reason for me to try to switch to other distributions. Please consider this as a “very late errors found report”.

I made a small list of the ones I’ve found until now, with also the workarounds. Hopefully it will be of some help:
**
SweetHome3D:** It just asks on the installation for the sun-java package; It needs also the sun-java-devel.
Ghemical: Two errors. First, the installation asks just for the libghemical4 package, but it also needs libghemical data. Worst is the fact that it doesn’t put the files in the proper path: Instead of /usr/share/libghemical4/2.98, it should be just /usr/share/libghemical/2.98. A simple symbolic link filled the gap. By the way, it was a pretty nice icon available on the internet, should be included also.
Scilab: Version 5.1.1-21 from Packman repositories needs an unavailable libumfpack library vesion. Version 4.1.2-60.12 from opensuse-education works fine.
xdrawchem: Version 1.9.9-15.8 from opensuse-education yelds segmentation faults on the startup. Version 1.9.9-3.12 from Education doesn’t have this problem and works just fine.

These are the ones I properly identified the problem and corrected so far. I’m also having a strange problem with bibus and python (they work together properly at home but not at work). I did not used the one-click for this one in both, I downloaded the rpm.

Also: What is that nfs-server package good for? Except for yielding me a week of different problems from an unnoticed instalation and no deinstallation for the quota-nfs package trial (so keeping the nfs-server that is bugged, and taking out the nfs-kernel-server that is perfect)? I heard that it was even removed from the OpenSuse 11.1 (congratulations for this one, by the way).

Again, hoping not to have offended anyone, just trying to help to improve the best distribution around.

[oldcpu]

@johannesrs

First of al, I would like to apologize if this is the wrong place to report this kind of issues. Unfortunatelly, I could not find neither decide for a better place.

Well, this forum is a start to see if others have encountered the same, or to get the views of others. But its not the actual place to raise such issues to get them fixed.

If the package is installed, then you can type:
rpm -qi <package>
or
rpm -qi <package> | grep packager
you may be able to see who to contact about the package.

For example, for smplayer to find the packager:

oldcpu@hal1000:~> rpm -qi smplayer | grep Packager
Packager    : Pascal Bleser <pascal@links2linux.de>

and then one knows who to send the email to.

Alternatively, if the package is on one’s hard drive, but not installed, one can use rpm -qpi <package.rpm> | grep Packager

For example, lets say I have pac-0.4.5-0.pm.1.i586.rpm on my hard drive:

oldcpu@hal1000:~/rpms> rpm -qpi gpac-0.4.5-0.pm.1.i586.rpm | grep Packager
Packager    : Toni Graffy <toni@links2linux.de>

Alternatively, one could go to webpin and do a search on each of those, if you do you will note which repos the package is on:

• SweetHome3D - packaged by Packman. Go here to find packager: PackMan :: SweetHome3D
• Ghemical - on the Education repos. Probably best to try one of the rpm commands I gave above to find who is the packager.
• Scilab: - as you noted, from Packman. Go here: PackMan :: scilab and the packager is clear.
• xdrawchem - as you note two versions, one on education and one from user aeszter. You can use the rpm method I noted above to find packager.

Once you know the packager, you can send them an email.

Before reporting a package, I recommend you take a careful look at your repositories with “zypper lr -d” … many times one encounters dependency problems because one has inappropriate repositories that were not part of the assumptions of the packager when they packaged the application.