hi everyone..
unfortunately i gave the following cmd as a su on mandrakelinux10.0
urpmi.removemedia -a
& this remove all the media.
Now i want to get back all the removed ones i.e.
Installation CD
Installation sources
Contrib CD
Contrib sources
Jpackage.org
Jpackage.org sources
thru MCC-Software Management-Media Manager
but i don't know how to do that i.e. what to include in ADD option on Type of medium,Name,Path & Relativepath to synthesis/hdlist.
pls tell me how to do it.
thankx.

from memory

go to the Media Manager in the Software Management section of the Control Panel (Configure Your Computer) and click on Add.
Change the medium type to Removable Device and in the Path section navigate to /mnt/cdrom (presuming this is the device you're using) and click OK. You can give a name as well (eg; Disk 1). the disk should spin up and be scanned. It takes a good few minutes to read the disk.
For external sources go here http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and follow the instructions.

salparadise> Thanks for the great info. However I've tried about 12 different sources (ufl, usc, gatech, illinois, france.....), both from the http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and built-in method (click on "add") in software media manager, and every single one fails with:

no hdlist file found for medium "main"
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/synthesis.hdlist.main.cz]
problem reading synthesis file of medium "main"
unable to update medium "main"

If I use the software media GUI method I get essentially the same thing: it tries to download, than says it failed.

Any ideas?? Any ideas where I can find more information about WHY it failed? I've tried last night for a couple hours, and today, so I doubt it's a maxed-out user list on each server........thanks for any help.

ah
apologies

when you've selected external sources and clicked on "Step Two" (or is it Step Three) the page gives you some output. Copy this into a terminal and run it (as root). This will add the sources so they show up in the Media Manager.

Which is why the explanation of URPMI and link posted on my sig tends to be more comprehensible for newbies, though ultimately it leads back to the same thing...

Thanks. I was using "su" to turn into root, but for whatever reason it works fine now. If only I could find a perl-5.8.5-3.1.101mdk.i586.rpm with a signature somewhere!! Thanks again for everyone's help!

I think perl is on one of the cd's, you could browse then to find it and click to install perl.

ahh. i guess you learned not to use "urpmi.removemedia -a" (-a for ALL) unless you're uninstalling the distro.