[Qgis-user] Raster -> Merge (gdal_merge) failure

[Nick Hopton]

Hi All, thanks for the comments. Still no progress, which is beginning
to make me feel rotten.

Just to pick up on the comments and questions:

Ramon, no the plug-in doesn't make any thing it just fails with the
error message. If I try to run gdal_merge from a terminal all I get is
'command not found'. Version 1.7 is built against GDAL/OGR Version
1.8.0, according to Help -> About.

Giovanni, I've never needed to set the path to Gdal before.

Anyway, thing have moved on. I started by doing a purged uninstall of
QGIS and its dependancies and then deleted .qgis and the
~/.config/QuantumGIS directory. I then ran apt-get clean to empty my
local cache.

Then, using the package manager I reinstalled QGIS 1.7. The packages
installed were:

========================================
gdal-bin (version 1.8.0-2~natty2) will be installed
grass (version 6.4.1-2~natty2) will be installed
lesstif2 (version 1:0.95.2-1) will be installed
libgdal1-1.8.0 (version 1.8.0-2~natty2) will be installed
libhdf4-0-alt (version 4.2r4-11ubuntu1) will be installed
libhdf5-serial-1.8.4 (version 1.8.4-patch1-2ubuntu3) will be installed
libnetcdf6 (version 1:4.1.1-5build1) will be installed
libogdi3.2 (version 3.2.0~beta2-6) will be installed
libqgis1.7.0 (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
libqwt5-qt4 (version 5.2.0-1build1) will be installed
libxerces-c28 (version 2.8.0+deb1-2build2) will be installed
odbcinst (version 2.2.14p2-2ubuntu1) will be installed
odbcinst1debian2 (version 2.2.14p2-2ubuntu1) will be installed
python-gdal (version 1.8.0-2~natty2) will be installed
python-qgis (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
python-qgis-common (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
python-wxgtk2.8 (version 2.8.11.0-0ubuntu8) will be installed
python-wxversion (version 2.8.11.0-0ubuntu8) will be installed
qgis (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
qgis-common (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
qgis-plugin-grass (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
qgis-plugin-grass-common (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
qgis-providers (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
qgis-providers-common (version 1.7.0~natty1) will be installed
unixodbc (version 2.2.14p2-2ubuntu1) will be installed
========================================

which on the face of it looked satisfactory. You were waiting for the
"but", well here it is. But, after starting QGIS and clicking 'Raster'
all I see is the raster calculator. No problem, go 'Plugins -> Fetch
Python Plugins...'. Here I see that GdalTools (together with some
other plugins) is already installed. It's not, of course, and what's
more the options to upgrade, reinstall or uninstall it are greyed-out.
So now I really am in Queer Street.

So where do I go from here, Guys? There seems to be some residual
memory of a previous installation, somewhere.

Regards, Nick.

-- 
Nick Hopton, Caversham, Reading, England.