Help! Linux dependency hell *fixed for now*

[rpc64]

I just installed Mandrake 9 and am trying to install the stupid, stupid Nvidia drivers. I downloaded the source rpms only to find out that I don't have rpmbuild installed. But before I can install rpmbuild I first have to install autoconf(among other things). autoconf says I need /usr/lib/autoconf/ac-wrapper.pl. Of course I dont have a /usr/lib/autoconf directory. I searched the Mandrake cds and my hard drive for the ac-wrapper.pl but nothing is found. Where can I find this file? And once I find it, what exactly do I do with it?

 

[Bremen]

Sounds like you didn't install devel packages during the install. The easiest way to fix this is to install the devel series if possible (dunno if Mandrake supports this kindof thing).

Otherwise you'll need to install gcc, m4, autoconf, automake... etc. Looking in 'man rpm' the -p option allows you to search for a file in uninstalled packages, so 'rpm -qp ac-wrapper.pl *' might do the trick... not sure how rpm would handle the expanded splat :-\ Otherwise a quick script:

#!/bin/bash
#stupid script Bremen wrote without checking if it will work :0)

for blah in *.rpm; do rpm -qp ac-wrapper.pl $blah; done


hrm, one line script... maybe you can just type it in at the command line :0) Of course substituting ac-wrapper.pl with a user defined variable would allow for reuse... oh well, I'm too lazy to edit what I just wrote :0)

 

[rpc64]

Thanks. I ended up just putting in the install cd and installing everything that way. It was pretty easy because it finds and installs the required packages for you. While I'm at it I might as well throw a couple more questions out.

1: I set my default run level to 3, installed Nvidia drivers, then set it back to 5. But it's still just booting to a command prompt. X is not auto starting.
2: Is there a way to set it where xgamma gets set to a certain value automatically when X starts?

 

[Nothinman]

Mandrake's supposed to ship with urmpi or something to handle dependencies for you.

 

[TheWart]

hope you dont thrink i am trying to steal your thread or anything...but for a great distro that handles dependencies wonderfully IMO check out Gentoo linux it is absolutely amazing.

 

[Nothinman]

Debian has apt to handle them for you too, but telling him to switch distros (especially to Gentoo or Debian which are significantly harder to install) doesn't really help.

 

[rpc64]

Yeah I know Gentoo is really nice but I'm a Linux noobie and I wanted to go with someting that would be easy to use. Anyone have an answer for my runlevel problem?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: rpc64
Thanks. I ended up just putting in the install cd and installing everything that way. It was pretty easy because it finds and installs the required packages for you. While I'm at it I might as well throw a couple more questions out.

1: I set my default run level to 3, installed Nvidia drivers, then set it back to 5. But it's still just booting to a command prompt. X is not auto starting.

Does startx work properly for you?

2: Is there a way to set it where xgamma gets set to a certain value automatically when X starts?

Probably, but I dont know it

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: rpc64

2: Is there a way to set it where xgamma gets set to a certain value automatically when X starts?

Don your reading glasses and check out the XFree86 man page - there are a number of gamma options in there that can be added to an xserverrc file.

 

[rpc64]

Thanks everybody. Problems fixed. I don't know why, but X did start automatically when I booted up a few minutes ago. And I read through the XFree86 man pages and found that you can put "gamma <value>" in the monitor section of the XFree86Config-4.