[NTLUG:Discuss] KDE problems

[kbrannen@gte.net]

Fred wrote:
> Hey, fellow gurus, help, please. I am running Mdk8.0/kde2.1 and wanted to
> upgrade to kde 3.0, so I went to kde and followed the 
> instructions and when I ran "urpmi *" it hosed my system. I now have a fu'ed
> box that has no gui and I really don't have a lot of time to 
> screw around with it. Mr. Murphy, and all that.
> 
> Anyway, I assume (bad word, that) that I still have all my config data.... I
> also have about 8 gigs of room on /home2 that I can use for 
> temp backup, so no probs there.... 
> 
> What I would like is some ideas about the best way to procede to restore the
> system without wiping out the rest of what is there. I 
> have the original 8.0 cds, so doing an rpm -i on all the kde packages would
> probably get it going. I worry about finding all the config 
> data first, though. 

Hoping that /home is a separate partition, it shouldn't be that hard. :-)  In 
situations like this (just before an upgrade), I usually copy /etc, /var, 
/usr/local, and anything else that seems important off to another partition 
(and burn it to a CD, but then I usually do full backups before a system 
upgrade/install too).  After that, I can upgrade/install the system, and if 
some functionality doesn't come back right, then you have the "old" config 
files to guide you (e.g. lilo.conf, hosts, resolv.conf, XF86Config, ...). 
This saved my butt last week when I upgraded to SuSE8.0, but that's another 
story. :-)  Anyway, after a little prep work, try reinstalling (whatever 
packages you think you need) off your CD to get a working system back.

> 
> Next question is what happened in the first place? Why did a simple upgrade
> process hose up the system? Are the files in the 
> mandrake8.0/kde system that buggy and, if so, why in hell are they still there?

I've never run Mandrake so I won't hazard a guess.

Good Luck!
Kevin