updating mandrake :: dependency problems

[eXtremist]

The other day, something happened to my linux system and I had to reinstall.. Just for kicks, I decided to do a FULL PACKAGE INSTALL so I'd have lots of stuff to play with. So anyway, after the install, I tried updating the system....but noticed I couldn't update a lot of packages because of dependency problems.

Now, I thought that if the packages were available for update, the dependency problems would all be resolved, but this is not the case. Will I kill my system if I force an update? Why are the packages there if they are not installable? And will I be doomed forever with old software because I chose to install everything on the mandrake CDs??

Mainly I'm wondering if forcing the packages will cause problems... I'm kinda stuck in a recursive loop for most of them..

ie. I can't update pack1a to pack1b because it depends on pack2a.. And I can't update pack2a to pack2b because it depends on pack1a..

Anyone who's installed Mandrake FULLY could probably help me :)

[chadm1967]

Yeah, that's what's been frustrating me the most with Mandrake. Each time I try to do an update, there are always dependency problems. When I try to force a package, it just tells me that the update has failed and quits. So, I haven't been able to test the theory that forcing a package will break your system.

I hope this is something that Mandrake is working on in the next release.

[Malakin]

If you're using just rpm to install stuff and you have two files that depend on each other you can do this "rpm file1.rpm file2.rpm -i" and it will work.

Another way to do this if there's a lot of files depending on each other is just to make an empty directory, copy the rpms into the directory and do "rpm *rpm -i" if there's more dependancies just copy the rpms needed into the directory, try "rpm *rpm -i" again and repeat until it stops complaining of dependancies.

If you are installing something and it complains of conflicts, use -U (upgrade)instead and that will solve it most of the time.

urpmi apparently takes care of all these problems but I'm not aware of any clear instruction on using it and I only used it once myself so far so I wouldn't do a good job explaining it either. "man urpmi" if you're interested.

[eXtremist]

Thanks Malakin..