Setting up GUI selection at Mandriva 2005 LE startup

[fabik317]

I recently uninstalled KDE to replace it with new version (3.5). The installation went alright, I set up my PATH to include the new KDE binaries but when I turn on the computer I still only have to choose between GNOME, WindowMaker and IceWM, IOW KDE still is not included. When I shut down the X server and run startkde, it complains that the X server is down, so I run startx but immediately after starting the X server it starts GNOME. (KDE itself runs ok, but in this situation I can only run it from within another GUI. Does anyone know how to include the new KDE in the GUI menu in the welcome screen? Thanks.

[bigjohn]

I recently uninstalled KDE to replace it with new version (3.5). The installation went alright, I set up my PATH to include the new KDE binaries but when I turn on the computer I still only have to choose between GNOME, WindowMaker and IceWM, IOW KDE still is not included. When I shut down the X server and run startkde, it complains that the X server is down, so I run startx but immediately after starting the X server it starts GNOME. (KDE itself runs ok, but in this situation I can only run it from within another GUI. Does anyone know how to include the new KDE in the GUI menu in the welcome screen? Thanks.

Sorry my friend, I can't give you precise instructions as I don't know how, but I managed to get kde 3.5 installed yesterday.

Initially, I followed these instructions

KDE Install Instructions
1. add all needed urpmi repositorys with: urpmi.addmedia mde.rpms
http://anorien.csc.warwick.ac.uk/mir...c//2006.0/RPMS with hdlist.cz
2. go to easyurpmi.zarb.org and add mandriva main and contrib + plf-free and
non-free repositorys
3. go to runlevel 3 with init 3
4. cp .kde in home dir to .kde.old or something
5. urpmi --auto-select
6. remove kdebase-kdm-config-file with: rpm -e --nodeps kdebase-kdm-config-file
7. readd kdebase-kdm-config-file with: urpmi kdebase-kdm-config-file
8. go to runlevel 5 with init 5 or reboot

Unfortunately it all went really wrong at the No. 6 stage - the No. 5 stage isn't that helpful either as it seems to take forever (it wanted to install something like 450 different packages). Then when I did No. 6 it seemed to be OK until I tried the No.7 stage and it didn't want to install 3 important packages - mainly the kdebase-kdm-config-file one, so it meant that I couldn't start the GUI. Plus when I to see what was going on, but using gnome or ICEwm, they wouldn't open either.

So how did I manage this? Well actually it's reasonably straight forward (well it was how I did it).

1. log out of kde and restart a session in ICEwm - then from a browser, I went to easyurpmi and got new sources from the mandrake control centre (I couldn't remember the format for adding a repository in a terminal), I deleted my sources by doing

urpmi.removemedia -a

and then added the new ones (be careful, because I coudn't do a copy and paste in the terminal window in ICEwm, I had to type them by hand). I then added the mirror above (the one in the instructions - again, by hand).

From there, I just opened the MCC (mandriva control centre/configure my computer), let it check for packages to install - all ot the mde.rpms packages appeared in the rpmdrake+ section i.e. ones that I could install, so I changed back to the rpmdrake- part and carefully deleted all of the kde 3.4.2 packages, moved back to the rpmdrake+ section and proceeded to add the newer kde 3.5 packages from the list.

I rebooted and it worked. I have had to mess around with the config for a few things, but mostly it's been straight forward.

I was having to be very careful, because I have a repositories/entries for main, contrib, updates, jpackage, plf free, plf non-free and the mde.rpms - the mde ones are easy enough to spot, but some of the package names/numbers are very similar.

don't know if that will help you any, but thats how I did it.

You might also find more about this here.

regards

John

p.s. Oh and yes I did have to re-install, because of the mess up I said about above, plus when I tried some other instructions - neither of which worked. The above method did. Luckily, I have seperate /boot, /, /swap and /home partitions so that I didn't loose anything from my /home - just the hassle of re-installing everything.