Tahr Puppy Package Manager fails fetching

Using applications, configuring, problems
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ahoppin
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon 16 May 2011, 04:13

Tahr Puppy Package Manager fails fetching

#1 Post by ahoppin »

The title isn't quite accurate. Actually Tahr fetches all the tennis balls as required, it's just that he drops some of them on the way back to the computer.

I'm building a new full installation* of Tahr 6.0.5, currently adding goodies from the PPM. Things were going pretty well until I tried to install dillo and ghex, both from the Ubuntu Trusty Tahr repository.

The PPM found all the dependencies and downloaded them. It installed the downloaded programs, but it didn't install all of the downloaded dependencies.

No surprise, both dillo and ghex failed to start, griping about the missing libraries.

For dillo, the PPM detailed report said:

File /usr/bin/dillo has these missing library files:
libfltk.so.1.3

And for ghex, the PPM report said:

File /usr/lib/libgtkhex-3.so.0.0.0 has these missing library files:

libgailutil-3.so.0
libgtk-3.so.0
libgdk-3.so.0

File /usr/bin/ghex has these missing library files:

libgtk-3.so.0
libgdk-3.so.0
libgailutil-3.so.0
libgtk-3.so.0
libgdk-3.so.0

(Note: I reformatted the text of the second pair of reports to make them more readable)

I checked /usr/lib and confirmed that the required libraries weren't there.

But here's what's weird. I booted Tarh 6.0.5 from a flash drive, installed the same programs with PPM, and everything worked flawlessly! PPM found the dependencies, downloaded them, installed them, and all was well.

I was able to get both dillo and ghex working on the full installation by copying the required libraries from the flash-booted filesystem to /usr/lib on the full installation, then making the necessary symbolic links to duplicate the required library structure.

This exercise in manual installation is actually kind of interesting, and to some extent I expect it when I'm installing programs from "foreign" repositories. I remember having to round up several dependencies on the web when I was installing more obscure stuff on Lucid 4-5 years ago.

Still, it seems odd to me that programs would install just fine on a flash-booted (frugal) Tahr, but on a full installation, PPM doesn't seem to install the dependencies it downloads.

Is it something I did wrong? Or could it be a PPM bug?

Thanks!

*PS - I know, most Puppians (Puppyistas?) are big on frugal installation. I see major benefits to frugal puppies on flash drives, and where they have to coexist on a vfat or ntfs disk. I also use frugal installations for situations like that. But I'd rather do full installations for big, fairly fast disks, formatted ext3 or ext4.

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bigpup
Posts: 13886
Joined: Sun 11 Oct 2009, 18:15
Location: S.C. USA

#2 Post by bigpup »

For some unknown reason full installs just do not go correct sometimes.
They look like all is there, but stuff just does not get copied to the storage device.

Usually trying a new fresh full install helps.

Some things to consider before doing the full install.
Use ext3 for format.
Make sure the partition is freshly formatted.
Make sure the partition is clean. Has no other data on it.
Good idea to run a Gparted, partition check, to make sure the file system on the partition is error free.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
When I was a kid I wanted to be older.... This is not what I expected :shock:
YaPI(any iso installer)

ahoppin
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon 16 May 2011, 04:13

#3 Post by ahoppin »

I found some other weird symptoms. For example, Tahr refused to talk to a printer on another machine via Samba. Once again it worked fine with the flash drive.

Another thing is that when I first installed it, Tahr didn't recognize the ethernet port. I had to manually install the driver. It had recognized it with no problem from the flash drive.

Finally, a couple of times when I booted, it couldn't find the sound card. It came back on a reboot, vanished again, returned. It seemed just plain flaky.

With that strangeness, and your suggestion, I'm junking this installation and starting all over. Bummer to lose all the cosmetic tweaks and installed software, but I don't think I can rely on it.

BTW, thanks for mentioning ext3, because I was just about to format that partition ext4. Will run fsck before installing too.

Hope it goes better this time.

Thanks again.

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