no way to install any RPM

hi, i swear i tried out every single solution i heard of on the net but still i cannot install any rpm except those coming from the repositories. this system is a HP 630 laptop with SLED 11 sp1 (no damn way to get SP2 installed, BTW and this is definitely crazy. not to mention that when i installed KDE i couldn’t return to gnome any longer: no matter if in the login i selected GNOME, the started session was KDE. period. had to uninstall everything ).
in gnome, clicking on a package i get the infamous error :

[PK_TMP_DIR|dir:///var/tmp/TmpDir.OFhJa9] Repository already exists.

attempted to clean /var/tmp; to delete PK_TMP_DIR from sources list: it pops up out again.

. if i try to install with zypper any RPM in a directory , well zypper tells me that it is “impossible” to find the package, even if i pass an absolute path. i’m wondering if and how zypper can install a local rpm.
using rpm -i only ends up with lots of whining about missing dependencies with the humour touch of complaining about the lack of… the exact package i’'m attempting to install.
so in the end i find myself with a vastly useless system since im stuck with the few packages provided by the installation repository, and the only way to have something new is compiling sources.
installing software should be a trivial task. with SLED 11 sp1 i can’t even get openssl-dev installed . this is totally crazy. hope someone will be able to enlighten me about what im doing wrong or i’ll be forced to sack SUSEless and revert to debian. it’s not that i don’t like tinkering with linux. i’ve been doing this eleven years strong but when i bought this laptop i expected a robust commercial linux system ready to go but what i got is one of the most vicious distros ever.

Hi
What repositories do you have active?

zypper lr

From the list use zypper rr to delete that temp one. You may
need to rebuild the cache as well.

You can create a local ‘plain’ rpm repository via YaST repositories and
drop any rpms in there, refresh the repo and use zypper to install.
Else zypper in <path/to/rpm/.rpm should work (needs to be
the full name).

Since it’s an Enterprise version, a number of packages aren’t present,
esp devel (not dev :wink: ) ones, these are available by downloading the
SDK iso image and adding via YaST add on products.

There is also the Open Build Service where a lot of additional
(unsupported) packages are;
http://software.opensuse.org/search?
Just select your release via the spanner to the right.

Then there is also the packman repositories;
http://packman.links2linux.org/


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 12.2 (x86_64) Kernel 3.4.11-2.16-desktop
up 19:56, 3 users, load average: 0.12, 0.07, 0.06
CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU

[QUOTE=malcolmlewis;10046]Hi

From the list use zypper rr to delete that temp one. You may
need to rebuild the cache as well.

You can create a local ‘plain’ rpm repository via YaST repositories and
drop any rpms in there, refresh the repo and use zypper to install.
Else zypper in <path/to/rpm/.rpm should work (needs to be
the full name).
[/QUOTE]
er… no-no. already tried to remove the temp. that just causes the system to throw a different error (Could not find the rpm-Package in Pool) but this is temporary, repository ‘PK_TMP_DIR’ is generated over and over again. also tried the local repository thing with a RPM directory. no effect- alsoit is very weird that zypper won’t accept to install ANY local RPM even if i provide the full absolute path to the named package, like happened with the libopenssl-dev package . no. way. will try those other options you named.thx for your kindness.

found what was wrong. my factory installed SLED is i386. my processor is an intel core i3 , on a HP 630 laptop :confused: now i bought a x86_64 machine, right? so why on earth HP installed a 32 bit version of SLED 11.1 ??

i mean, i586.

For future reference the preference for which Desktop Environment you are using is stored in ~/.dmrc So if you delete that file, you should end up with the default Desktop Environment (in the case of SLED that’s GNOME), the next time you log in. I can’t imagine how it could be necessary to uninstall things just to switch between KDE and GNOME.

If I recall correctly (don’t have access to SLED machine rights now to right) the .dmrc file is read after you put the usercode in. So say your .dmrc says KDE but you want GNOME. You could select GNOME in the GDM Session menu, then enter your usercode, press enter, and the Session selected is changed to KDE because that’s what’s in your .dmrc file. If you want GNOME you need to select it after your enter your usercode but before you enter your password. I seem to recall this being the cause of confusion in the past.

You’d have to ask HP.

well there was also another reason to uninstall the whole thing: kwin kept crashing all the times and i had other crash issues in kde4. too many error situations to troubleshoot for what i expected to be a workhorse… little experience from my side with gdm and gnome, i am at home with kdm and kde3 .

If you are used to Debian - install it! You’ll save more time and nerves.
Debian is much more stable and reliable than SLED. And easier of course.

in the long term. im out of time for messing with my new laptop. only i believed that HP with SUSE professional had to be a no-frills perfectly tailored workhorse with decent support… NOPE. im used to being left alone using free software but didn’t expect that buying my 1st commercial linux. not to mention that outrageous detail of suse i586 factory installed on a 64 bit machine. this is a friggin’ joke. HP… bye.