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Now I embark on the quickstart guide

Hello,
After a bumpy start and a few aborted attempts, I have installed LinuxMCE and my core is happy. I have the following suggestions for updates to the install guide, which I am happy to do myself, but I thought I would post them here first before diving into the wiki.

On the end clean kubuntu steps:

Note: Do not update any packages on the new Kubuntu system.  The LinuxMCE installer has it's own update facility and LinuxMCE may not install/function properly if you update packages before (or after) installing LinuxMCE.

This statement re-iterates the warning given in the download instructions which can be missed (as I discovered the hard way)

End of Downloading LinuxMCE section:

For the 2CD install you will need to download:
LinuxMCE_0704_CD1.iso
LinuxMCE_0704_CD2.iso

Installing mce-installer from KDE Menu:
for before the "right click"

If you have burned the iso's to cd's then insert cd1 into your clean kubuntu system. Open the root of the disk and right-click the mce-installer.......

Install LinuxMCE:

if the window does not appear or you are not prompted for an adminitrative password then you will need to run the command with root privaledges. open a terminal window, navigate to /usr/share/mce-installer/ and type sudo ./mce-installer.sh

I could not get the installer to run after using the command line method. This may be due to the privileges inherited from the command line method unpacking the installer but I can't be certain on this.

Network Configuration:

if your network settings are detected and correct. click next and skip to the "Choosing Mirror" section

Choosing Orbiter Interface:

If you selected the core only install you will not see this screen.

Installing Additional Packages:
I did not see this screen, again probably because I selected core only install.

Installing LinuxMCE Discs:

If you have the original iso's stored on your hard drive and they are accessible then you can point to them by selecting the second radio button and browsing to their location. you can do this for all required CD's

If anyone has a better way of phrasing any of the above or feels that I have missed anything important, please let me know and I'll try to incorporate it into the wiki update.

Zaerc, thanks for taking the time to reply with the information. I see now that I did miss that part you quoted from the download instructions. As I was reading the install guide and I used the direct link. I completely missed the download instructions point. I think it would be wise to restate it in the actual install guide as it is an important point, as is only too clear to me now.

The link to the other thread regarding gksu was not the one I had found . Had I seen this thread instead, with much better information, I would indeed have saved a lot of time and effort.

As for your other, somewhat personal, inflammatory and irrelevant comments. I shall assume that you are just venting steam at having to answer this sort of question for the 1,000,000th time. Thanks again for helping me out.

Ok, so I have downloaded the correct linuxmce cd1 and cd2 iso's. and reinstalled the mce-installer from cd1 using the command line method to mount the image. it worked great and zaerc was correct, the installer I was trying to use previously was an older version. I'm going to draft some changes to the install instruction page to stop others making this mistake. I'll post it in a seperate thread later.

when I ran the new installer it actually did something (yay progress). My system was checked and I received the (expected) message that I had changed some packages (i have not cleaned the machine yet, just continuing from where I left off). However what the diff list showed me was surprising. the only package listed as changed was as follows:
CHANGED 'wodim' '1.1.2-1ubuntu1' '1.1.2-1'

the version numbers are the same with only the "ubuntu1" missing. This would suggest to me that there is only a minor difference between the two perhaps only cosmetic changes to the file. But, ofcourse, I can not say for certain as I am not a linux expert, just a part time linux user.

Zaerc, considering your previous comment about package updates breaking the machine I would have thought there would have been more items highlighted (i updated 158 packages after the clean install (all feisty updates though, no gusty's that I noticed)! Do you think it is still wise to continue? Is it possible that other dependant packages are not listed here which could affect the success of my install? I would rather continue with this install than go back to square one and you seem to be knowledgeable on this front.

i think even 'linux guys' should expect a "permission denied" message rather than a "not installed" message in this case.

I'm not trying to start any kind of argument here, I simply wish to install linuxmce and the instructions are not correct. but did you read my previous post?

1. If you had followed those steps to begin with you never would have downloaded the mce-installer seperately as it belongs to the old version.

if you read the instructions the first step after downloading iso's is to install the mce-installer. No mention is made of where the installer is just "Right click on it." with a screenshot of the file magically on the desktop.
The alternative is the comand prompt install which directs me to mount the LinuxMCE_0704_CD1.iso, which i didn't even have. I had downloaded the kubuntu-7.04-desktop-i386.iso as directd in the clean kubuntu install section. Obviously it needs to be cleared up exactly which combination of iso's are required (i ended up with kubuntu live cd and linuxmce packages iso's which is obviously not ideal).

2. Updating your kubuntu install before (or even after) putting LMCE on top of it is not going to work properly.

I am guessing, as I have not tried it, that if I had downloaded a different iso from the one in the clean kubuntu section in the install guide I would have gksu installed as it did not appear to be available from the kubuntu live cd. it is clear that there are several install paths and the install guide is a bit unclear in this respect.

3. After breaking the system like you did in 1&2 there is no way to fix it.

Ok, thank you. if it is true that updating those packages has made it impossible to continue then I shall wipe the machine and start again. Please can you advise me which iso's I should be using, by name or by link, as it is clear that doing a clean kubuntu install from the live cd and then starting linuxMCE install does not work smoothly.

Feel free to tell me again how you were just following those "non-working" instructions in the wiki to the letter.

I followed the instructions to the letter  . clean kubuntu install points 1 - 10. Then step one of linux mce install. However, seen as I only got as far as the first step in the MCE instructions before it was clear that they were not working I started to investigate why so that I may contribute to the instructions to reduce further install woes for other linux n00b's like me. I could just moan and then say I am going back to WIN XP MCE but I would like to actually use linuxMCE before I make that kind of judgement and I'm sure other people would like that oppertunity as well.

SO, I am going to wipe my machine, download some different iso's and try again making notes as I go along. I may post some more questions on the forum about my installs, so if you feel like giving some constructive responses feel free to reply.

Don't hate me because I am determined!

excellent, thanks

tkmedia - thanks. I had not looked too closely at cd1 as I made the (obviously incorrect) assumption that it was an absolutely standard kubuntu image and would not include any mce files. I'll go back a bit and try it out from the first cd and see if that plays out any differently.

Zaerc - If the steps outlined in the install guide had worked I would not be in the position I am now and would certainly not be bothering the forum. Rest assured that I will contribute all my findings to the wiki upon satisfactory completion of an install.

ok, first I apologise for not being competent with linux. I have used plain ubuntu a bit as a user and the KDE interface still stumps me a few times when I look for something but I promise I am trying hard not to rely on the community to solve world hunger (and my install issue). Ok with that out of the way.

I have installed Kubuntu from the 7.04 release linked on the linuxMCE install pages. no issues there.

1. I downloaded the packages.iso but had to download the mce-installer separately (should I be looking elsewhere for some kind of combined iso with both parts on there? or can I continue safely.

2. I did not have gksu installed on the machine by default. I found this info in the forums where I also noted people saying I had to run the package updater. So I did this. 158 packages later I believe I now have a fully up to date feisty system. Is there anything specific I should check following this (kernel versions, etc.) and please tell me how (linux noob remember)

3. here is where I show dedication. I ran mce-installer (got the desktop icon. ran that. was prompted for my password and then nothing. a short burst of disk activity but nothing came of it despite repeated attempts.
I looked into the installer script did a bit of man file reading and then ran the tail and tar commands in a terminal to get the tmp file (tail -n 333 mce-installer.sh | tar xz -C /tmp/selfextract.XXXXXX) (I created the self extract file first and then ran the previous cmd). I then cd'd into it and ran the mce-installer in there. no joy, no life, no error message and no further chance of running the code manually.

Can anyone help me from here? Should I go forward or back? I really do want to get a lmce system installed (as I hope I have demonstrated above)

fdisk !IS! available is you boot from the DVD into recovery mode. however if you boot into the normal system (sans DVD) the machine will swear blind that fdisk is not there. I'm not a linux guru so I may be missing some simple setting somewhere, but I have tried various methods of invoking fdisk on the DVD installed system and have had no joy.
I have now started on the 2 cd install so won't be able to try anything further on this so consider this for information only.

Ok, but it does seem odd that this functinality not be included on the DVD. The ability to add storage to your core/md's is one of the essential tasks that WILL happen as you digital media library grows. Hopefully this will be remembered when the next quick install dvd is made.

Unless anyone else has any other idea's. I'll raise it in the feature requests to be sure.

I am also willing to donate my time in the form of testing on the UIQ3 phone. I have a Sony Ericsson P990i so hopefully that will provide a usefull bit of feedback. I do still use the phone though so I can't send it off anywhere.
I did look at getting into Symbian programming but the structure of the OS and the interfaces just scared me off

Hi,

I am new to the forum and am also relatively new to Linux so please bear with me if I make terrible mistakes.
I have just installed LinuxMCE from the quick install DVD. Not 100% smooth as I was going for a dedicated core so had to fight past LMCE's need to start the media station. This done I added some more hard drives to the system. All well and good, detected fine and recognised in the KDE System Settings Disk and File panel.
Ok so now I need to fdisk them and this is where my problem starts.
When I try to run fdisk (cfdisk, sfdisk or other flavours) I am told that I need to install the util-linux package. Ok, the handy hint tells me the sudo apt-get command I need so I run that. Apparently my util-linux is fully up to date..... so why then do I not have any fdisk. At the point I would normally have turned to the install DVD and run it from there but I have used all the IDE channels on my machine with hard drives and no longer have a DVD connected after the install.
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong.
Thanks in advance