That’s a great response to which I readily admit to being ‘guilty as charged’. I thought that the error messages I received were invariant - that is, that people more experienced than myself would know precisely what the error was, because there wasn’t any choice. I’m going to repeat the installation attempt and this time try to capture the specific wording of the error.
Firstly I must say though that Packman repository is part of my list of repositories and has been for about a year or so. Having found that Yast did not find a xine package for me when I searched, I looked at the SuSE fora to found out what others had to say about displaying wmv files (without the persistent ‘search for a codec’ error). Many forum entries on this topic pointed me to xine as being the most widely used solution and also pointed me to the Packman URl (Packman.links2linux.org).
When I visited it I found the necessary rpms for libxine1 and libxine-codecs. Double clicking on the link for an rpm immediately gave me the choice to install the package - which seemed to me to be exactly what I wanted (why wouldn’t it? There were no warnings that this might give the wrong result).
Here’s the first error message:
Package /tmp/libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i586.rpm could not be installed.
Details:
Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: warning: /tmp/libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i586.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 9a795806
error: Failed dependencies:
libxine1-codecs = 1.1.16.3 is needed by libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i586
libxine1 = 1.1.15 is needed by (installed) libxine1-pulse-1.1.15-23.3.3.i586
libxine1 = 1.1.15 is needed by (installed) libxine1-gnome-vfs-1.1.15-23.3.3.i586
I have only 1 option for responding to the error messageL it’s ‘OK’.
Here’s the second error message:
Package /tmp/libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i586.rpm could not be installed.
Details:
Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: warning: /tmp/libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i586.rpm: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 9a795806
error: Failed dependencies:
libxine1 = 1.1.16.3 is needed by libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i586
If I now follow the advice in the previous post and use Yast - Software Management, I find that there is no available package for libxine, only for libxine-codecs. Atempts to install this with Yast now return far more errors:
“There are some conflicts on the transaction that must be solved manually.”
Here’s the body of the error messsages (I can find no way to copy and paste this error text from Yast, so I have transcribed it by hand - which seems an utterly daft thing to have to do in year 2009!):
“libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.i686 requires libxine1=1.1.16.3, but this requirement cannot be provided” (that’s kind of interesting: it shows my previous attempts were on the wrong package -I chose i586 architecture)
Further detailed error information is:
"Uninstallable providers: libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.i586 (Packman Repository)
libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.i686 (Packman Repository)
Following actions will be done
[first un checked bullet]
architecture change of libxine1-1.1.15-23.3.3.i586 to libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i686
install libxine1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i686 (with vendor change) OpenSuse → PackMan :: Startseite
architecture change of libxine1-pulse1-1.1.15-23.3.3.i586 to libxine1-pulse1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i686
install libxine1-pulse1-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i686 (with vendor change) OpenSuse → PackMan :: Startseite
{I’m sorry, I can’t do any more of this - it takes far too long and is far too error prone; but there 's a lot more stuff like this]
[second unchecked bullet]
do not install libxine1-codecs-1.1.16.3-0.pm.3.i686
[third, checked, bullet]
Ignore some dependnecies of libxine1-codecs"
[end of error messages]
I then have ‘Cancel’ and ‘Apply’ optional buttons. Pressing ‘Apply’ has no discernable effect. Pressing ‘Cancel’ does what one expects.
So, where do I go from here? [Limited receommendations only, please; I’ve been to that place already…]*