boatman9

I am trying to add the backports section of the repository. Using the Software Management tool (Rpmdrake 2009.0) I opened

Options / Media Manager

Then I tried to tick the enable box for Mirror list Main Backports. Rpmdrake responded "This medium needs to be updated to be usable. Update it now?" I clicked yes, then a small window opened and a file appeared to download. After that nothing has changed. The box next to Main Backports is still not marked.

How does one add Backports? Can it be done from command console?

I see I can get the unlock code for my AT&T 860 AirCard for about $10 on ebay.

Both AT+T and T-Mobile will give unlock codes if you have been a customer for some time. If they ask for a reason tell them that you will be traveling overseas and will need to use a local sim card in the destination country. I am not sure about AT+T's requirements, but T-Mobile requires that the account has been open for 3 months. Note that an unlocked AT+T 3G AirCard can connect to T-Mobile's network on 2G, but not 3G, because the AT+T card lacks the 1700 MHz band.

I wonder if your AT+T 860 AirCard is being configured the same in both Linux and Windows. You may be able to use serial port monitor software to learn which command codes are sent to your AirCard 860 when operating under Windows.

Options should be added in Mandriva Linux Control Center (MLCC) configuration to support at least one of the major North American cell phone carriers. I want to learn more about what's done, which files are created etc, when one uses the MLCC tool to make a new GPRS/Edge/3G connection. There must be some documentation about that somewhere.

I used wvdial to successfully connect to T-Mobile's 2G network through my usb tethered TM506, as well as my unlocked ATT Sierra AC881 card. I am not in a T-Mobile 3G area, but ATT has 3G service here. A few weeks ago I borrowed an ATT sim card and connected to ATT's 3G using my Sierra AC881 inserted into a WRT54G3G-AT router (actually a WRT54G3G-ST router which I flashed with the WRT54G3G-AT firmware).

From your thread at forum.mandriva.com I see that your Sierra Aircard seems to be a PCMCIA card with a serial port built in. My Sierra AC881 is also a PCMCIA card but is a usb device. Sierra also makes an actual usb version as well. The actual usb model may be preferable for some people because when on a usb cable it could be moved around a bit to get a better signal.

About the problem you've had on 3G, I would suggest that you try wvdial. If wvdial doesn't fix the problem then you may want to try using a Sierra AC881 card. The PCMCIA version of the 881 can be purchased on ebay for about $30 usd including delivery.

I have connected my T-Mobile (USA) TM506 phone to a computer through a USB cable and am trying to configure a GPRS/Edge/3G Internet connection. When I use "Set up a new network interface" in the Mandriva Linux Control Center, and then select "GPRS/Edge/3G", and select my phone's model number, in which directory are the configuration files created?

It hadn't occurred to me that ntfsclone would be part of another package. ntfsprogs is already installed here so I have ntfsclone.

Thanks

Is ntfsclone in any Mandriva repository? :unsure: I can't seem to find it, but I haven't fully mastered repository management. I'm hoping it's in there somewhere.

Yes, I have gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly, Version: 0.10.9-1.1mdv2009.0.

I removed all repos, re-added just the plf repos, and tried to use --replacepkgs to overwrite the mdv version with the plf version, but without success. I used the command "urpmi --replacepkgs gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly". The result is below.

found package(s) gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-0.10.9-1plf2009.0.i586 in urpmi db, but none are installed

I also tried this without success:

[root@localhost urpmi]# urpmi gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
A requested package cannot be installed:
gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-0.10.9-1plf2009.0.i586 (in order to keep gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-0.10.9-1.1mdv2009.0.i586)
Continue installation anyway? (Y/n) Y
[root@localhost urpmi]#

There should be a way to do this package replacement from command line urpmi, but I haven't found it yet.

For some reason that's not working for me.

[root@localhost ~]# urpmi --media plf --auto-select
problem reading synthesis file of medium "PLF Free debug"
problem reading synthesis file of medium "PLF Free backports"
problem reading synthesis file of medium "PLF Free backports debug"
problem reading synthesis file of medium "PLF Non-free debug"
problem reading synthesis file of medium "PLF Non-free backports"
problem reading synthesis file of medium "PLF Non-free backports debug"
Packages are up to date
[root@localhost ~]#

In case there are two packages of the same version number, the installed package being from mdv and the un-installed package from plf, I want to replace the mdv version with the plf version. Can that be done easily?

What if a new version is released into mdv but not plf, as seems to have happened with gstreamer0.10-a52dec? When I update all packages, will the plf version be replaced with the newer mdv version?

I tried kdebase-kdm but it would run KDE only. Thanks to your idea, I looked for another login manager and found kdm (package name kdm) which allows me to run any of my installed desktops.

While running 2009.0, I see three versions of gstreamer0.10-a52dec available in Software Management (Rpmdrake 2009.0). They are 1plf2009.0, 1mdv2009.0, and 1.1mdv2009.0. After adding 1plf2009.0 only two versions are visible; the installed 1plf2009.0 and the un-installed 1.1mdv2009.0.

After the next package update from command line (urpmi --auto-select) 1.1mdv2009.0 replaces 1plf2009.0. Now only 1.1mdv2009.0 is visible. What happened to the other two versions? Usually the plf version is better. Am I losing any functionality when 1plf2009.0 is replaced by 1.1mdv2009.0 ?

When I am adding a package from command line using urpmi, how can ensure that the plf version will be loaded rather than the mdv version by the same name?

I installed 2009.0 Free and choose iceWM as my desktop environment. To my surprise the Gnome desktop was also installed. I then updated all packages and added task-kde3. The problem now is that KDE is not appearing in the Login Manager menu. By accident I discovered that I can run KDE by choosing No. 1 "Run Xclient script".

My Login menu looks like this:

Last session

1. Run Xclient script

2. GNOME

3. IceWM

4. drak3d

5. Secure Remote connection

I have some questions;

What is Xclient script?

What is drak3d ?

How can I make KDE appear in the login menu?

Do the Mandriva repositories have any packages for making labels on LightScribe DVD writers? I have searched but I didn't find any mention of LightScribe in the package descriptions.

I don't know how to tell which repo mirror was used. I don't fully understand the process, but it seems that when I run

"urpmi.update -a"

and then

"urpmi --auto-select"

a mirror list is downloaded, one of the mirrors is selected, and packages are downloaded from that repo mirror.

My urpmi.cfg file is full of entries like the following:

Main\ (Official2009.0-1) {

key-ids: 70771ff3

mirrorlist: $MIRRORLIST

with-dir: media/main/release

}

Downloading the package again, I get the following:

[root@localhost urpmi]# urpmi --auto --replacepkgs --no-install perl-XML-Simple

$MIRRORLIST: media/main/release/perl-XML-Simple-2.18-3mdv2009.0.noarch.rpm
The following package has bad signature:
/var/cache/urpmi/rpms/perl-XML-Simple-2.18-3mdv2009.0.noarch.rpm: Invalid Key ID (OK (DSA/SHA1, Thu 02 Oct 2008 04:36:52 PM PDT, Key ID e7898ae070771ff3))

I am considering switching from KDE to XFCE desktop. I need some help finding a clipboard tool (like Klipper), CPU speed monitoring/control widget, and audio mixer, to run in the task bar. I suppose the KDE versions of these task bar utilities will not work with XFCE, but I have not actually tried them.

I wouldn't mind having a fancier clock for XFCE, it seems the clock has no ability to adjust text size and could not display date or day of week.

I received the below message while using urpmi to update packages on my system. I installed the package anyway. Does anyone know how the signature could have become bad after the package was built, or how to tell if the package has been tampered with?

The following package has bad signature:

/var/cache/urpmi/rpms/perl-XML-Simple-2.18-3mdv2009.0.noarch.rpm: Invalid Key ID (OK (DSA/SHA1, Thu 02 Oct 2008 04:36:52 PM PDT, Key ID e7898ae070771ff3))

Do you want to continue installation ? (y/N)

My buddy just moved away from Mandriva to PCLinuxOS because of this and urges me to do the same. I think he may have a point.

I was using PCLinuxOS until I switched to Mandriva, in part because there are more RPMs in the Mandriva repository. PCLinuxOS has peculiarities too, as most distros do. One unexplained behavior of PCLinuxOS is that it won't automatically run e2fsck on the bootable ext3 partition (during boot up) every 30 or so mounts as I like to do whenever 'Maximum mount count' is exceeded. Consequently I would run 'tune2fs -l /dev/sda3' and see 'Maximum mount count' =30 and 'Mount count' could be 50 or 100 and no file system check was possible because the main partition (/dev/sda3) was already mounted. In order to check that partition I had to first boot from a live CD. Then I had a new laptop with a wireless card that somehow was not supported by pclinuxos-2007 (the latest full kde version) but worked with pclinuxos-minime-2008, except that minime is so minimal that it's a lot of work to install it with a typical set of programs, so that's not good either. As I never cared much for Gnome I didn't try pclos-gnome2008, but instead came over to Mandriva and been pretty happy here.

Now I plan to install Mandriva 2008.1 which of course has kde3.5, then I'll just wait for kde4 to mature.

Nevertheless, arts will not be installed when adding the kdemultimedia-noatun package. As a result, noatun will not run until one has installed arts. This is because the packager failed to include arts in the dependency list of the kdemultimedia-noatun package.

Probably i did something else on installation then everyone else.

But i have the opportunity logging in into KDE3.5 just after booting the machine in Mandriva2009.

When installing 2009.0, is it an option to directly load kde3.5 instead of kde4? If so, many people would like to know how it's done.

Thanks for the help. I was researching dependencies for an installed package, so I had to use Greg2's method.

This relates to Mandriva's 2009.0 repositories. I don't know about previous Mandriva repositories. Package kdemultimedia-noatun needs package arts, but arts is not listed as a dependency for kdemultimedia-noatun. The result is that when one adds kdemultimedia-noatun it won't run and gives this message "Connecting/starting aRts soundserver failed. Make sure that artsd is configured properly."

How would I display dependencies of a package, either using Mandriva's GUI Software Manager (Rpmdrake 2009.0) or from command line using some kind of urpmi command?

What are people using nowadays to play mp3 audio at a fast speed without changing pitch?

I have added package kdemultimedia to my 2009.0 installation in order to get the Noatun program. I want Noatun because it can play audio files at varying speeds without changing the pitch. Now Noatun runs but won't play any audio files, it just stops shortly after I click on play. Anyone know what the problem might be?

Isn't there a way I can switch to kde3 while continuing to use 2009.0? If there's an installable kde3 package for 2009.0 that may be a quicker way than installing the 2008.1 CD.

I recently installed 2009.0 and of course got KDE4. With KDE4 I have not been able to put two programs one above the other in the task bar as I did in KDE3. There seems to be no easy option to add application icons to the panel, and when I did drag&drop one application then it's icon was on the panel but I could not move it right or left. There are more drawbacks, but I won't list them all.

I am wondering if KDE4 is just all around less capable than KDE3, or do I just need to learn how to properly use KDE4? If KDE4 is a lesser program then what is the procedure to replace it with KDE3?

Thanks. It wasn't exactly the same problem as mentioned in the other post. I had to click on the Albums button, the one with Albums written vertically in upper left of screen and just above the Calendar button. After that I was able to see the thumbnail images and click on View in the normal way.