On Sunday 30 November 2003 01:47 pm, Langsley T Russell wrote:
Let me first say, thanks to you all for the help, it is truly
appreciated.
That said, I must say how frustrating this whole process is being. It is
hard to believe that simply getting the latest updates for ML 9.2 is
this difficult, arcane, and truly byzantine.
It is supposed to be as easy as setting up a mirror, and typing
'urpmi.update --update urpmi --auto-select --update'
Perhaps it is the setting up part that is hard.
I did finally get the urpmi.setup window open from the command line
but The GUI window which opens simply offers me a plethora of
choices with NO indication of what is needed or or wanted in any of the
fields. I have no Idea what to do with the various buttons. That is
completely ignoring the fact that the program remains completely
unavailable from my GUI.
Sounds like someone should write a Mandrake Update tutorial that is easily
accessible for newbie's
I went to http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/index.php and followed the
instructions. Once again I was offered a multitude of choices for
every step with no indication of what might be best. I simply selected
the already highlighted choices and got, along with a great deal of
command line stuff:
Silly boy, you're supposed to know what's best :-)
retrieve of source hdlist (or synthesis) failed
no hdlist file found for medium plf
examining synthesis file
[/var/lib/urpmi/synthesis.hdlist.plf.cz]
problem reading synthesis file of medium plf
unable to update medium plf
After several more of these attempts It has started downloading
something but I have no idea what. It is about half through downloading
whatever it is.
Should I assume that what it is downloading is what is needed, and if so
now what?
If you use the easy urpmi at plf.zaerb.org and get these kinds of errors. It
is quite likely that the mirror you have chosen is just busy. You get this
message because urpmi cannot download the file lists it needs when setting up
the source. If the mirror was busy when you try to use it, you will get a
message like package not found, you may want to update your urpmi database.
In the eastern US, I have a very fast mirror close to me at Penn State
University. carroll.cac.psu.edu. I cannot use it during the day though,
because it is always busy, both because it is popular and the number of
anonymous logins is limited during business hours so the people that go to
school there can have priority.
I find that I get the best luck by using the European mirrors during the day,
where they are 5-7 hours ahead, and the US mirrors during the evening. The
mirror list tells you where each mirror is, so you might want to take this
into account when selecting one. Try to pick a mirror where it is the middle
of the night where the mirror is.
I also get around this problem by downloading all the updates in the middle of
the night using a little script I wrote and execute with cron. I then setup
my update source to be the local mirror and then I never get these kinds of
errors.
Essentially, you need a source for Main, which is the official Mandrake
Distribution, a source for Contrib, which is software packaged by volunteers
for Mandrake but not supported by MandrakeSoft directly, PLF for the illegal
stuff ;-) and updates for the security updates. If you installed from CD,
all you really need is the updates source.
I really do appreciate all the help. However this entire process is very
daunting to the newbie. There has got to be a better/easier way.
The easy way would be for you not to have to do anything to get set up.
However, that method would require a huge server farm and lot's of bandwidth
on MandrakeSoft's end, which would be very expensive. The present
alternative, using the public ftp mirror system which is free, can be a bit
hit or miss.
As much as I love Mandrake, this is where a distro like LindowsOS really
shines. They have gone the expensive route to provide direct download
through click'n'run, but you have to pay for the priviledge of using it.
--
/g
Outside of a dog, a man's best friend is a book, inside
a dog it's too dark to read -Groucho Marx
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
