The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Installing KDE 3.3 on Mandrake 10.1
Dennis Parsons & Roger Brown		  


Dennis Parsons and Roger Brown joined forces to save the day with a Linux script

Melb PC has a great resource available to members in its news groups, where answers can be found to all manner of problems, computing or otherwise. Have a read by using the "Browser Read News Groups" link on the MOTD page or configure your news reader using the instructions in the FAQ at: http://www.melbpc.org.au/faq/mailbags.htm.

Here's one Linux related example:

On the news groups recently Allan W, a frustrated recent convert to Linux raised an issue he had with KNode, a popular Linux news reader - while spell checking "on the fly" it would replace words by inserting them in the wrong place. Not a big issue overall, maybe, but most annoying to Allan.

More seasoned users of Linux having seen such things before would be likely have a look, shrug their shoulders, work around the problem and wait for the next version to come out, realising that KNode is still pre version 1.0 or beta, so probably a little buggy. This attitude is okay for "geeks" but can be rather foreign and uncomfortable for the "newbie".

Roger Brown noticed that the KNode program included with a newer version of KDE on Slackware Linux that he was trying didn't have the problem, indicating that a newer version of KNode on Mandrake might very well solve Allan's problem. After a small amount of experimentation and discussion we decided the easiest thing to do was upgrade KDE - a large undertaking but relatively simple.

To make it easier for Allan, Roger and I wrote a script he could run that would automatically download and install KDE 3.3 with minimal user intervention. I tested it on my system and when Allan ran it things went without a hitch, leaving him with KNode working correctly and a very big smile on his face.

Installing KDE 3.3 on Mandrake 10.1

Before you consider doing this to your own system you must understand the following: it is sourced from "cooker" meaning it's developmental and potentially unstable, so there is a risk involved. That said, it worked fine for Allan and me. The script is specifically for installing an updated KDE on the current version of Mandrake - which at time of writing, is 10.1
.
Mandrake 10.2 will be available soon and will include this update so you could wait, unless you absolutely need a fix. Also note that the download is over 200 MB making it impractical over dial-up.

There are a couple of useful techniques in the instructions so even if you don't upgrade KDE you might be able to use them later.
  1. Save the script to file "cooker". I'll assume you saved it to /home/Allan for the rest of the exercise.

  2. Open a terminal window and "su" to root user

  3. Edit /etc/inittab (eg. mcedit /etc/inittab) to change the runlevel from 5 to 3 so you start in terminal mode in case the install fails.

         Change the line: id:5:initdefault to id:3:initdefault.

  4. Change to the directory into which you saved the file "cooker":

         cd /home/Allan

  5. Run the script: bash cooker

  6. Press "y" if it asks

  7. If it asks to choose between several packages pick the likeliest looking one.
     
    If nothing stands out take a stab - I picked number 1 mostly.

  8. Note any problems - package names of failures to download and any conflicts.

  9. Sit back, relax, have a drink and restart KDE when the script finishes running after an hour or three.
    If necessary startx from the command line will start the GUI.

  10. If KDE restarts, change /etc/inittab back to id:5:initdefault

  11. If it fails consult our newsgroup: news.melbpc.computing.misc
Listing 1 is the "cooker" script you'll be running, noting the first two lines are actually one long line.
 
urpmi.addmedia cooker ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/Mandrakelinux/devel/cooker/i586/media/main
urpmi —media cooker kdeaddons
urpmi —media cooker kdeadmin
urpmi —media cooker kdeadmin-lilo
urpmi —media cooker kdeartwork
urpmi —media cooker kdebase
urpmi —media cooker kdeedu
urpmi —media cooker kdegames
urpmi —media cooker kdegraphics
urpmi —media cooker kdemultimedia
urpmi —media cooker kdenetwork
urpmi —media cooker kdepim
urpmi —media cooker kdesdk
urpmi —media cooker kdetoys
urpmi —media cooker kdeutils
urpmi —media cooker kdewebdev
urpmi —media cooker koffice
urpmi.removemedia cooker

Listing 1

The first line is adding a source of files we're calling "cooker" to the urpmi configuration and getting those files from the pacific.net.au FTP server.

The next lines are installing various components of KDE from the "cooker" source we've just added.

The last line is removing the configuration for "cooker" files from urpmi so they can't be accidentally used later.

The script is available for download from http://member.melbpc.org.au/~parsonsd/linux/linux.html. There are also instructions for removing the new version of KDE and replacing it from a CD or an online source. Print it out before upgrading because Web access would be more difficult if the upgrade failed and the GUI wasn't available, in which case you would have to be prepared to use a text based browser such as Lynx.

Note: Mandrake Linux has adopted a new name - Mandriva Linux. Future releases will be yearly and named as such, eg. Mandriva 2006. Mandrake 10.2 will be known as Mandriva Limited Edition 2005.

Reprinted from the May 2005 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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