Re: Reinstalling Package modules on Madriva 10.2 after removing gtk

From: Dances With Crows (danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows_at_gmail.com)
Date: 08/31/05 

Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:03:27 -0500

On 31 Aug 2005 09:20:59 -0700, chris.lyon@spritenote.co.uk staggered
into the Black Sun and said:

Include context when you post to Usenet. That never-to-be-sufficiently-
damned Google "permanent alpha" excuse for a Usenet client can be made
to do that if you kick it hard enough. Read CBFalconer's .sig for
directions. Context restored:

> Peter T. Breuer wrote:
>>chris.lyon@spritenote.co.uk wrote:
>>> I have removed gtk and it's dependants with the package tool

Um... why? Oh well, Consider this a Learning Experience, sort of like
touching a hot stove.

>>> lost both the package tool and gcc. I am unwilling to reinstall gcc
>>> from source as I assume there are many required dependancies.
>>Oh! I see - you are wibbling on about gtk, not about gcc. The answer is
>>to use an installer that does not use gtk. surely plain "rpm" is fine in
>>that regard!
> The package installer is the gui interfaced tool that handles the
> installing & removal of packages. It is dependant on Gtk & probably
> one or two other things.

Yes. No problem, there's another command-line interface to the package
system used in Redhat-derived distros. That's the /usr/bin/rpm command.
"man rpm" may be a little too much to digest, but IIRC Mandrake had a
hack on the side that automatically resolved dependencies. urpmi or yum
or something like that. Check your dead trees; I don't use Mandrake so
can't tell you what it is exactly.

Get your distro CDs (or DVD, or whatever) and go find the GTK+ RPM.
It'll match *gtk*.rpm . Then "rpm -Uvh gtk-1.2.3.rpm". That should
install GTK+. If it doesn't, rpm will spit out "unresolved
dependencies: gtk-1.2.3 depends on glib-2.3.4..." which means you need
to rpm -Uvh glib*.rpm first. Iterate until all dependencies are
resolved. yum or urpmi or whatever can *greatly* speed up this process.

> why gcc has disappeared I don't know.

That is weird. gcc has no dependencies on GTK+, so your initial
statement "I removed gtk and all [its] dependants" doesn't seem to
explain that. Did you have gcc selected via Ctrl-click in a list or
something?

> I have done nothing else and feel that a repair should be possible.

Anything's possible. The question is how much time and effort you're
willing to put into it.

> assume rpm is what sits at the bottom of all this

Yes. RPM = teh suck IMHO, since I've used apt and portage and I find
them much easier to deal with.

> running Mandriva as a GUI environment I am keen to use the GUI tools

You've uninstalled GTK+, so a metric arseload of the GUI stuff *won't*
*work* until you reinstall that with rpm/yum/urpmi/whatever. Never rely
on a GUI for the important stuff. That'll bite you in the ass
eventually.

> In retrospect I should post this on a Mandriva specific group,

alt.os.linux.mandrake is still up, and it would've been a simple thing
to cross-post there.

> In reply to Mr Breuer, If you are kind enough to help then that is
> wonderful. If you feel that this is another newbie asking daft
> questions then at least have the good grace to aid and try to resist
> the tempation to use patronising expressions

Peter T. Breuer is one of this newsfroup's resident Grumpy Gurus. I
don't think he can avoid being patronizing. Maybe that's what academia
does to some people....

> when you have little understanding of the actual predicament.

He knows what's up. His problem was that he expected you to be more
skilled than you apparently are. He does that with everybody though.

> I have devoted the best part of a day or so to addressing this and so
> find your attitude at best, disappointing.

That certainly wasn't clear in the original message. Prepare to be
disappointed with large pieces of Usenet. The people with knowledge
often cop an attitude because they get irritated with the rafts of
clueless n00b questions. Nothing personal, just that individual people
can be pleasant to deal with and howling masses can be absolute hell.

> I have areas of expertise that you might have need of at some future
> date

Um... it's a big Net out there, and even if you're the foremost world
authority on Underwater Basketweaving, there are plenty of other
semi-pros out there. (In other words, don't try the "I'm Rick James,
bitch!" approach on Usenet. It just doesn't work.)

> and if you treat all people unfamiliar with a world, that even you
> must admit is often counter-intuative, in this way then the very area
> of expertise you are wedded to will gradually fade away.

Peter doesn't have to care; he's probably got tenure. So... try the rpm
thing I mentioned above and see how well that works. If you can
reinstall GTK and Glib, you may be able to get the GUI-frontend for RPM
up, and then you can proceed in a way that's more familiar to you. HTH, 

-- 
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin /    mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
http://www.brainbench.com     /    "He is a rhythmic movement of the
-----------------------------/      penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL

Relevant Pages

  • Re: A tower-induced go-round
    ... USENET is nothing more than an electronic version of a hanger BS ... And most people realize USENET an electronic BS session. ... 2000 HP piston engine at 5 rpm is 0 hp. ...
    (rec.aviation.piloting)
  • Re: rpms and dependencies
    ... John Rowell wrote: ... > hear about RPMs and dependencies and unintelligible terminology that I ... I've only been using Linux for about a year. ... simply downloading the required rpms into a directory with the original RPM ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: RPMs for openoffice 1.1 RH9
    ... > Try downloading the package again, maybe something went wrong during the ... > If you get errors then make sure you have the required dependencies (and ... > a file from the currently installed openoffice.org RPM is ... > need to install at least the three OpenOffice RPM's at the same time. ...
    (linux.redhat.misc)
  • Re: Dependencies
    ... You won't master Linux or any Linux distro in a weekend and don't kid ... use several repositories to increase the chances that dependencies will ... You could maintain a hand built repository by downloading/dumping all ... rpms into a single dir on your hard disk, ...
    (linux.redhat)
  • Re: Fedora without RPM?
    ... In the past, I ran into too many dependencies, cyclical dependencies, ... For an over-simplified example, package B requires ... Because I hadn't installed them through RPM or through the "right" RPM ... I've used several RPM-based distros, RH 5.2, ...
    (Fedora)