[Techtalk] Conspiracy

Mandi mandi at linuxchick.org
Wed Sep 18 15:46:00 EST 2002


On Tue, 17 Sep 2002, Andrew wrote:

> Hi All,
> 	I know this is a basic processbut it has thawarted me for months.
>
> 	I simply want to up-grade my software from Mndrk8.0 to Mndrk8.2. Rpmdrake
> and urpmi don't work for me, All i see is packages errors,errors or
> already installed. I can't figure what I am doing wrong. SO here I am...
> 	I have a directory named "NewStuff" (Unique name huh?) NewStuff is full
> of RPM's downloaded from a Mndrk mirror. I downloaded the whole
> directory of Mndrk 8.2.(I did this last night by ftp for the 10th time.)
> I also dwnld the iso images, but believe they were courupted in transit.
> 	What simple thing am I not doing??? Guess that is a hard
> question.**Better question is how to proceed from here. I got the RMPs
> (Not source). Do I use rpm them one at a time?*** That will be a while.
> 	For the first time Rpmdrake did not freeze (Maybe it is the new cpu?) I
> got to the point where Rpmdrake asked for the CD's... but they are 8.0
> and I thought on three occations I gave the path to "NewStuff". Each
> time as path to source "NewStuff" is typed in it disapears "poof!". I
> removed CD's a source and poof they return in the list. Root or user
> neither makes a difference.
> 	Help Please....

Andrew --

What are you really trying to do?  If you want to do a system-wide
upgrade, then your best bet is to burn the iso images to CDs and go from
there.

If you have downloaded the -entire- mandrake distro, file by file, to a
partition on your harddrive that does not have other files on it, you can
upgrade from the harddrive, using a boot floppy.

Both of these require you to go through the install process as an
"Upgrade" rather than a new install.

Updating the entire system via RPMs is inefficient and can have
disasterous effects.  On systems without a lot of -physical- RAM, it can be
impossible, as the RPM database must resolve all dependencies across all
packages at once before choosing which packages must be installed in what
order.  Keeping the depends/provides information in memory for hundreds of
packages usually doesn't work out the way you'd like.

As for your troubles with rpmdrake/MandrakeUpdate.  This program will be
slow!  And if you want to use a source other than the CDs, then, yes, you
have to change your sources and exit out of the program correctly.
However, you CANNOT use 8.2 rpms to update 8.0!  There are version
dependencies for almost every package.  I haven't had any trouble with it
on any of my 7 or 8 series boxes, so I'm not sure what you are seeing.

If you don't have a CD-R drive, you can do an FTP or HTTP install from the
mirror you pulled all those files from, anyway, using "network.img", which
is found in the "images" directory.  Copy it to a floppy disk using

dd if=network.img of=/dev/fd0

and boot to it.  Follow the instructions to point the installer at an FTP
or HTTP site.

--mandi




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