Trying to compile Balsa on Mandrake

Vaughn Treude vltreude at deru.com
Mon Oct 16 19:16:07 MST 2006


On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 13:03, Donn wrote:
> As a longtime Mandrake user (since version 5) I agree that on previous
> versions, the upgrade process has been error prone and at times
> completely broken. I have, however, successfully upgraded on multiple
> machines from 9.2 to 10.1, from 10.1 to 2006 Powerpack, and from 2006
> to 2007. The only issues with the last were with the new XGL
> functionality in 2007 and these were easily solved by running XFdrake.
> 

Donn,
That's good news.

> What version Mandrake are you on? If you are trying to install a new
> email client, have you looked in the PLF repositories (you can use
> easyurpmi to configure your sources if your version supports it) for
> balsa? I am not familiar with balsa, but you may find it there. I also
> suggest you might try Thunderbird since it is a simple matter to
> install using the Tarball from Mozilla and you can use the latest
> version that way. 
> 

I may try that.  I was getting frustrated since I'd already tried a
newer Evolution and Balsa.

> On 10/16/06, Eric Shubes <plug at shubes.net> wrote:
>         I agree that yum is very nice. I've even done major upgrades
>         (RH9->CentOS4)
>         using it.
>         
>         Vaughn, which version of Mandrake are you using? According to
>         http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7448, Mandrake 9.2 has it
>         on the
>         distribution disk in contrib/i586/yum-2.0.1-1mdk.noarch.rpm.
>         See article for
>         more details.
>         

Eric,
Couldn't recall - it must have been 9 because I couldn't find yum in the
package manager.

>         Stick with it. Once you get yum going, I think you'll love it.

Yes, I would like to get it working. And please excuse my earlier
complaining.  But you must admit, it's a bit of irony that a product
that's supposed to make installation easy is difficult to install! 
:-)   Maybe an older version will work for me.

Thanks guys for your suggestions.
Vaughn

>         
>         Vaughn Treude wrote: 
>         > On Mon, 2006-10-16 at 07:22, JD Austin wrote:
>         >> Fore redhat I install both yum and apt to get out of
>         dependency
>         >> nightmares pretty painlessly.
>         >> I'm not sure of the mandrake repositories out there. 
>         >> The dag repository for redhat stays pretty up to date
>         >> :http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/apt/
>         >> Here's one set of yum repositories I found for mandrake: 
>         >> http://speculation.org/garrick/yum.conf
>         >>
>         >> JD
>         >>
>         >
>         > JD,
>         > Thanks for the feedback.  I have heard about yum, so I
>         decided on your 
>         > suggestion to try it, and downloaded the latest version, yum
>         3.0.
>         > Unfortunately, it's a bit baffling.  To begin with, the
>         INSTALL file was
>         > not encouraging:
>         >
>         >       For usage information, please see the README. 
>         >
>         >       run make
>         >       run make install, if you're a masochist.
>         >
>         >       you're better off making an rpm and installing it
>         >
>         > If "make install" is so bad, why do they provide it?  And
>         how should I 
>         > make this rpm?  And what will making the rpm accomplish?  I
>         haven't a
>         > clue!  OK, so I tried the "make install" anyway. It _seemed_
>         to work.
>         > Running yum gives this message:
>         >
>         >       There was a problem importing one of the Python
>         modules 
>         >       required to run yum. The error leading to this problem
>         was:
>         >
>         >          No module named yum
>         >
>         > That's very interesting, since yum is what I allegedly just
>         installed.
>         > Perhaps I don't have the right version of python (mine is
>         2.3.3) - seems
>         > like the most likely explanation for this snafu but I don't
>         see any
>         > documentation in the yum source which tells me what version
>         I need.
>         >
>         > In the FAQ file, I found this interesting tidbit: 
>         >
>         >       If you are getting a message that yum itself is the
>         missing module then
>         > you probably  installed  it incorreclty (or installed the
>         source rpm
>         > using make/make install). If possible, find a prebuilt rpm
>         that will 
>         > work for your system like one from Fedora or CentOS. Or, you
>         can
>         > download the srpm and do a
>         >
>         >    rpmbuild --rebuild yum*.src.rpm
>         >
>         > I didn't find any prebuild rpm's for my system, but I did
>         see a source 
>         > RPM, which I downloaded, and I tried that rpmbuild.  It
>         spews a lot of
>         > messages, but I can't see that anything actually happened
>         under
>         > /usr/src/RPM, nor does yum work any differently than
>         besfore.  Did the 
>         > previous operation actually modify the yum RPM I
>         downloaded?  Not sure,
>         > but I tried installing it, which produces a tarball in
>         > /usr/src/RPM/SOURCES.  I unzipped and untarred this and now
>         what?
>         > Another make and make install?  Why not?
>         >
>         > Nothing's changed, though.
>         >
>         > My conclusion:  I've never seen a more muddled and confusing
>         and utterly
>         > useuless installation on any open source product! 
>         >
>         > Vaughn
>         >
>         >
>         >
>         >> Vaughn Treude wrote:
>         >>> Hello everyone:
>         >>>
>         >>> I've got a Mandrake system I use for my day-to-day
>         business.  I do not
>         >>> want to upgrade it, as it generally works fine and I've
>         _never_ had an 
>         >>> upgrade-type install succeed on Linux, ever (it has always
>         hung the
>         >>> system - and I've tried it on several machines at several
>         times.)  My
>         >>> Mandrake system's most annoying feature is that its email
>         client 
>         >>> (Evolution 1.4.6) is buggy and has somehow gotten worse;
>         I've let my
>         >>> mail file get large and now it no longer allows me to
>         empty the trash
>         >>> folder. I wanted to try a newer version of Evolution, but
>         they all have 
>         >>> too many dependencies; I can't even get the configure
>         script to finish.
>         >>> Then I remembered someone mentioning Balsa, whose name
>         implies "light
>         >>> weight", so I thought, this should be easier.  I didn't
>         have to add a 
>         >>> lot of libraries to get the configure script to run, but
>         the stupid
>         >>> thing won't compile, due to missing header files.  It
>         started out with a
>         >>> file that I found in one of the Debian *-dev source
>         packages, which then 
>         >>> required another, and then another.  After downloading and
>         installing at
>         >>> least 20 of these packages, I finally come to a dead end:
>         gtkhtml-dev.
>         >>> It has versions only for fink, maemo, and
>         freebsd.  There's supposedly a 
>         >>> gtkhtml-devel package in the SuSE hierarchy but those
>         links to that are
>         >>> broken.  Does anybody know why a package like this would
>         be impossible
>         >>> to find with Google?   Or can anybody suggest a less
>         painful alternative 
>         >>> email client?
>         >>>
>         >>> Thanks,
>         >>> Vaughn
>         >>>
>         
>         
>         --
>         -Eric 'shubes'
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> 
> 
> -- 
> Donn
> There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."
> -- Dave Barry 
> 
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