Mandriva 2007 Disappointing

[koosjr]

I downloaded and installed Mandriva 2007 within a week after it was released for public download.

Previously I used Mandriva 2005LE and for me that is still the best Mandriva release ever in terms of reliability and the fact that almost everything worked perfectly.

Mandrica 2006 was a huge flop and I tries installing it twice but there were so many things not working that I gave up on it minutes after installation.

Now, with almost four months of using 2007, I will probably go back to 2005LE. I applied almost all the updates and now my updater does not work any more. Printing was a pain from day 1 and when one hits the print button in a program, the print dialog needs a full five minutes to get alive. The same goes for clicking the "printers" button under peripherals in the control centre. Also, KIIIB stopped working because mkiso gives fatal errors.

The update for the menu bar to include all the missing items did not work and open office did not want to save a document. I am running a previous version of that. Mandriva 2007 also messed up two of my users so that the system crashed after logging in on those user names. Luckily no data loss and I could move it over to new users.

As far as I can see, there is no updated 2007 available for download. If that is the case, I would like to try it once more. Does anyone know about something like that?

[Quillz]

For me, Mandriva 2007 didn't even detect my monitor, although I probably did something wrong with the Live CD. Perhaps it was corrupted.

[ZakaqerE]

I dunno, I'm using mandriva 2007 beta. It works just fine. And you should have backed up and repartitioned your disks for the new distro. What exactly didn't work? Everything works just fine on my machines.
Well, except for DRI but that's on my tower which has an evil ATI card. The print dialog comes right up on my computer. I'm using KDE 3.5.x. And you?

"now my updater does not work any more"

What happens when you try to update using "urpmi --auto-update"?
Does it just hang?
And the first thing you should do is go to easyurpmi.zarb.org and add all those media after, of course, after you use "urpmi.removemedia -a".
then "urpmi rpm-build" and then "urpmi urpmi". This updates both rpm and urpmi making this less likely to hang. The other thing that will cause them to stop working is when the mirrors are down obviously .

So... what's KIIIB? And why are you running old versions of open office when it's so easy to upgrade?

"As far as I can see, there is no updated 2007 available for download. If that is the case, I would like to try it once more. Does anyone know about something like that?"
When I got the mandriva linux .iso file and burned it to a disk it had kernel-2.6.17-4mdvlegacy. I upgraded to the kernel-2.6.17-9mdv. Do "uname -r".

[ZakaqerE]

For me, Mandriva 2007 didn't even detect my monitor, although I probably did something wrong with the Live CD. Perhaps it was corrupted.

That exact same thing happened to me on my tower. I think... Did you at least see something on the monitor.The boot image was all corrupted. It turned out that the built in video drivers did not support my ATI TV card. Oh, well. I just hit enter and it defaulted to VGA drivers with software rendering. And I was on my way. So, what did you do?

[koosjr]

I dunno, I'm using mandriva 2007 beta. It works just fine. And you should have backed up and repartitioned your disks for the new distro.

Did my backups before I installed new version.

What exactly didn't work? Everything works just fine on my machines.
Well, except for DRI but that's on my tower which has an evil ATI card. The print dialog comes right up on my computer. I'm using KDE 3.5.x. And you?

I am using KDE 3.5.4.

What happens when you try to update using "urpmi --auto-update"?
Does it just hang?

No, it does not hang. I am working from Mandriva Control Centre. When I click on the "Look at installable software and install software packages", it cannot even retrieve the packages list, then I get the message "Program has exited abnormally."

So... what's KIIIB?

The CD burner package.

And why are you running old versions of open office when it's so easy to upgrade?

As I have said, the new version included in the distro do not want to save documents. Pretty simple but serious mistake.

BTW, I am not interested in learning Linux command lines. I had my share of programming computers when I was younger, but I lost all interest in the subject. I use the computer for work. If the graphic interfaces is there, it should work. period.

[envirocbr]

Well...then...The Command line is simple a a sure fire way of performing actions without fault and to see what is going on.

I am not so sure if the GUI shows you what mirrors you are using, I have never used it! But You should check your mirrors to make sure they are working. Mandriva 2007 is a excellent Distro, I have not yet had one problem with it.

I would always recommend checking the HCL at mandriva to make sure all hardware works fine.

ALso, are you installing from Mandriva ONE for FREE Mandriva 4 disc set? You should also check to see if you had a good download and a good burn.

BTW I used to use KIIIB, got sick of it quick and use cdrecord

[ZakaqerE]

drakconf ( Control Panel) programs will exit abnormally after a new network interface is added or there were problems with the config of the old one. So delete your interface(s) and reconfig them, then logout and hit ctrl-alt-backspace to restart your graphical interface.

And what you are using to install packages is rpmdrake.
rpmdrake sits on top of urpmi which sits on top of rpm.
Every time you run your install a package it runs urpmi. The problem could be on any one of those 3 programs.

You said you got mandriva a WEEK after it was publicly available 0.o. Mandriva 2007 is way more than a week old as far as public download goes. What might be the problem is that you just have a really old version ( Like '05 for example) and when it tries to look at the server's to find media from which to update, the servers simply don't exist. But when mandriva cannot retrieve a packages list, it simply means that there are no media. Or they have been misconfigured. In any case you have a number of options.

1) Get a new,updated copy of Mandriva 07. It is most likely that the fact that your copy which you received about a week after public download was available is just way too outdated. This could be the root cause of your problems(IMHO).

2) Because your mandriva 2007 is old and probably cannot contact the server that holds the list of package servers and where on the servers the package list is, I think you have backed yourself into a corner. Mandriva Control Center's package installer (rpmdrake program) seems like it can't help anymore because it is misconfigured. Fortunately, though you don't have to learn to use the command line for complicated programming. Unfortunately you do HAVE to use it this one time only for this one thing. The graphic interface cannot do anything about a server that has gone missing, no software can. What you need to do is go to the Easy URPMI site and go to step two. From there click all of the check boxes and go to the final page. Then in the console( Applications->System->Terminals->Konsole) you must type "su" and then enter. You will be asked for the root password. Now your in. It only gets easier from here. type "urpmi.removemedia -a" and then enter once the command completes just copy and paste the text from from the area that says "type this in a console as root" using right clicks (Ctrl-V is used as a special keycode in terminals). As soon as you paste the commands will execute, updating ALL of your package lists. The last command doesn't have a carriage return at the end though so after everything else is done you will have to hit enter again. After all of that, you never HAVE to touch the console again, EVER.

Now you should be able to use the package manager normally for the rest of the computer's lifetime. In order to update your package manager database you must activate it (rpmdrake). Then under the file menu you select update media. Then you select all and click ok. Done! All of your databases will update. When you get file not found errors and such, you need to update the DB again. The mirrors receive nightly updates.be repeated 10 or 20 times. To make it much easier on your-self, just go to the aformentioned terminal, type su[enter] and then your root password [enter] and then "urpmi --auto-update --no-verify-rpm"[enter]. Look! it works all by itself now . Don't paste in "--no-verify-rpm" If you would like to be bugged every time a package didn't have a signiature

In summary you have three options:
1) Get a new CD to fix it.
2) Type a few easy commands in the console ( the rest being pasted in).
3) Ignore it and go back to Mandriva 2005. It's two? years old. ??????

[koosjr]

Thanks for the advice Sir!

I am busy downloading the CD version (not the DVD one as i did previously) and give it a try.

However, according to the date stamps, the files on the ISO sources are exactly those I have.

I will never the less give the CD version a try and see what happens.

[koosjr]

I downloaded a CD version of Mandriva 2007 - the date stamp of the files are 2006-10-05 IIRC.

The CD version does not even want to install - problems wioth the kernel installation.

This is a very fist for me. All my other Mandriva versions I downloaded at least did a full install.

[masam]

...Then in the console( Applications->System->Terminals->Konsole) you must type "su" and then enter. You will be asked for the root password. Now your in. It only gets easier from here. type "urpmi.removemedia -a"...

nice.
i did not realize an un-inst preceeded a new/re-inst.
i thought it was a layered type of effect.(replace & update)
thanx for the heads up.
this may be something worth noteing(sic) for all Newbs that are joining us from the dark side of MS.(we had the luxury of this being done automatically for, us....)
you might want to start writing HOWTO's!!!!
good show!
love, light and laterz.