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Thursday 25 December 2003 11:46 pm, Guy Rouillier wrote:
I'm having difficulty understanding the proper way to configure the Software Media Manager (SMM). I was trying to install the latest Anjuta 1.2.0, and I found it here:
ftp://carroll.aset.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake-devel/contrib/i 586
I started by adding the following to the sources first, as it contained files I needed:
ftp://carroll.aset.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake/9.2/contrib/i58 6
When I did that, it seemed to find the hdlist all by itself. I'm looking at the config for that and it claims the relative path is "hdlist.cz". When I click on a file in this directory, I see descriptions for it. It also took a long time for the SMM to download it, I guess because it was downloading all the descriptions.
The contrib directory on the mirrors have a synthesis.hdlist.cz file in them. In fact I think part of the reason that people have been getting warnings is there are two, a synthesis.hdlist2.cz plus synthesis.hdlist.cz in the three I browsed. Those files contain the descriptions. There is also an hdlist2.cz in (relative to the contrib tree)
../../i586/Mandrake/base
that contains all of the information required if you have the GUI software manager (rpmdrake) set to show all information. That's the large one that takes forever to download. Relative sizes for the two:
synthesis.hdlist.cz (in contrib tree) 275.9 KB hdlist2.cz (in base) 15.6 MB
Charlie, thanks for the detailed reply. After you pointed it out, I got back on gFtp and went back to Carroll EDU. I do indeed see hdlist.cz in pub/linux/distributions/mandrake/9.2/contrib/i586 and two sythesis files in pub/linux/distributions/mandrake-devel/contrib/i586. On this particular FTP site I can't find the base directory you identify relative to the mandrake-devel directory. Perhaps because this is a devel directory? In the non-devel contrib directory, I do indeed see a 16 MB hdlist.cz file.
When I added the first ftp directory above, I again didn't specify the "relative path to synthesis/hdlist". Editing that entry now I see "synthesis.hdlist.cz". It finished very fast, and I could see it trying to find an hdlist in multiple locations (and failing, apparently.) I have no descriptions for anything in that directory, though the files themselves show up.
See above.
Finally, my questions:
(1) Am I doing the appropriate thing by specifying the complete directory, or should I just be "ftp://carroll.aset.psu.edu"; and it knows to look in the appropriate subdirectories?
You did it correctly, but during most of the day the carroll.aset.psu.edu mirror will often not be available to anonymous ftp transactions. The bandwidth is reserved for the university, and people that have accounts, during business hours.
Fortunately for me I'm a night owl, so I usually do this stuff after 10 pm EST.
The sub directories are required in the URL unless you're using a command line mirroring app such as rsync to mirror locally. Those kinds of applications use "modules" on the remote server so the instructions are slightly different.
(2) What is the appropriate thing to enter in the "relative path to synthesis/hdlist" field? How do I know this without someone telling me? For the second ftp directory above (the one that seems to have been added completely, judging from the presence of descriptions), I don't see any hdlist file in the ftp directory (I ftp'd there directly.)
Since you asked. (-; You have to specify the directory containing the files/packages that you need. To get to the rest of the information about those files you have to use the actual hdlist and not the synthesis so you have to change directories. The relative path I showed above is changing two directories upward (../../) then following the path to the base directory.
But how do you know that hdlist file two directories up (and over in the base case discussed above) has details on the files you are looking at? I tried downloading one of these hdlist files and they are apparently binary, so you can't just browse them.
As far as knowing without being told Guy, I suppose there are only a couple of ways;
Go snooping on the mirror you selected as your favourite and find the files that you are interested in, then figure out the paths and how to move between them. That's the way I did it lo these many moons ago. Or:
Use the automatically configured update_source path that's built for you when you run Mandrake Update as a starting point, and adapt the paths to what you need at present, for the software source you intend to use.
The urpmi plain text configuration files are in
file:/etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg
and the lists etcetera are stored locally in
file:/var/lib/urpmi/
(3) The install of anjuta found everything on the carroll edu site, and installed okay (anjuta runs.) But when it finished, it said "installation failed, source Carroll EDU has invalid list file format". What does this mean? Note this is the source with the descriptions.
It isn't anything to worry about, and has caused a mini war of words on the cooker list. It means that someone needs to regenerate the hdlists for 9.2; remove the duplicates and dead wood, and then the mirrors will have to re-synchronize to update theirs. Don't worry about it for now, it'll eventually get sorted.
(3) I guess I should have asked this first. Is there a HOWTO on SMM?
There are lots of man pages about all of the individual components but I don't recall ever seeing a complete "How-To." You may want to look on the TWiki, both the community one
http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org
and the one for Cooker
http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/
Even if you don't find the specific article you hope for both are amazing sources of information.
Thanks, as always.
Best of luck Guy.
Thanks for your time, Charlie.
Guy Rouillier
Charlie --
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