The Curious Case of the Vanishing Desktop Environments

[Chambers Boxman]

I'm in a real jam here, I've installed 6.2 on my PS3 (80GB, the Motorstorm Bundle model), and I'd almost gotten settled in, when it just threw me a curveball out of nowhere.

All of my desktop environments mysteriously disappeared, and all that's left is this really strange and basic one, nothing but a terminal, a clock, a firefox window, and a little dropdown left-click menu that says "TWM".

I figured I'd try reinstalling the GNOME desktop environment, I didn't know what to search for, so I figured I'd just try "gnome".

I get this when I try to install that, or ANYTHING for that matter:

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[root@localhost keral]# yum install gnome
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Loading "protectbase" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Excluding Packages from Livna for Fedora Core 6 - ppc - Base
Finished
Excluding Packages from Fedora Extras
Finished

From there it just sits there until I cancel the action.

So, first problem, I don't know how to get my desktop environments back, second problem, I can't install anything.

Any ideas?

[Iguana]

Thats strange, I don't know what you did, but I'd try to go back onto the game os and then boot into linux again (maybe its some type glitch or bug?); if that dosn't work then re-installing 6.2... 
If your stuck in linux and can't get back to the game os, then try eather of these two methods to get back...

http://www.edepot.com/playstation3.html#TOC
Method 1) Hold Power button down for two beeps (while PS3 is in the off mode, red lite): --Resets video resolution to lowest settings--. 

Method 2) Hold Power button down for three beeps (while PS3 is in the off mode, red lite): --Enters PS3 diagnostic mode-- (repeat this procedure twice) from the secret menu hit restart ps3. 

[Chambers Boxman]

Thats strange, I don't know what you did, but I'd try to go back onto the game os and then boot into linux again (maybe its some type glitch or bug?); if that dosn't work then re-installing 6.2... 
If your stuck in linux and can't get back to the game os, then try eather of these two methods to get back...

http://www.edepot.com/playstation3.html#TOC
Method 1) Hold Power button down for two beeps (while PS3 is in the off mode, red lite): --Resets video resolution to lowest settings--. 

Method 2) Hold Power button down for three beeps (while PS3 is in the off mode, red lite): --Enters PS3 diagnostic mode-- (repeat this procedure twice) from the secret menu hit restart ps3. 

I'm not stuck in Linux, since I can just use the boot-game-os command in the terminal, and I tried restarting Linux, but the desktop environments still aren't there.

I'd uninstalled some programs that I wasn't using before this happened, but I didn't remove anything that would affect GNOME.

[billb]

I'd uninstalled some programs that I wasn't using before this happened, but I didn't remove anything that would affect GNOME.

Maybe they took some important dependencies with them. You should be able to review everything that was uninstalled with:

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more /var/log/yum.log

Regarding your issue with installing software, it sounds like the protectbase plugin taking a long time to finish if it's getting stuck at that point. Make sure yellowdog-extras is disabled if you're using fedora-extras on YDL 6.2 (edit /etc/yum.repos.d/yellowdog-extras.repo and change enabled=1 to enabled=0).

[Chambers Boxman]

I'd uninstalled some programs that I wasn't using before this happened, but I didn't remove anything that would affect GNOME.

Maybe they took some important dependencies with them. You should be able to review everything that was uninstalled with:

Code: Select all

more /var/log/yum.log

Regarding your issue with installing software, it sounds like the protectbase plugin taking a long time to finish if it's getting stuck at that point. Make sure yellowdog-extras is disabled if you're using fedora-extras on YDL 6.2 (edit /etc/yum.repos.d/yellowdog-extras.repo and change enabled=1 to enabled=0).

I checked the log, turns out I removed the entirety of Enlightenment, and "kdebase", so I'm guessing that's probably why GNOME decided to leg it.

I edited the yellowdog-extras, gonna see if I can install GNOME again, will edit with a progress report.

EDIT: The installation thingit eventually finished, and I got this after trying to "yum install gnome"

Code: Select all

82 packages excluded due to repository protections
Nothing to do

So I'm guess it either doesn't want me to do that, or I just searched for the wrong thing.

DOUBLE EDIT: Tried installing mplayer, since I hadn't done that yet, got the exact same thing. Troubling.

TRIPLE EDIT: Tried installing mplayerplug-in, met with success! Guess I already had normal mplayer or something. Haven't figured out how to get the GNOME desktop environment back yet.

[billb]

If your yum install ends with "Nothing to do" that means either A) it's already installed or B) it wasn't found under that name. I'd try opening that yum.log and reinstalling everything that was removed using the names of the packages listed in the log. You can do that all in one yum command like:

yum install item1 item2 item3 item4 ...

For example:

yum install mplayer mplayer-plugin vlc mozilla-vlc

Then you have to be extremely careful, as you've seen, about what you uninstall. It may not be obvious that you need it but if you're not sure it's best to just leave it alone (or Google it).

[Chambers Boxman]

Alright, I reinstalled Enlightenment, awful as it is, and used it to reinstall GNOME.

Now all is well, thanks a bunch for your help, this would have driven me mad.