Notices

I had to reflash my device, and since then have been unable to install the GPE applications from the Application Manager. If I use apt-get it works, but when trying to run the application, it fails. Running from a terminal window gives the error:
gpe-calendar: error while loading shared libraries: libgpewidget.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. Same thing with gpe-contacts. I can't find this file on my device, and can't apt-get it using any way I can think of. Suggestions?

I'm about ready to reflash my device again and not install any applications automatically to see if that makes a difference.

Jim

You are probably missing libgpewidget1 package.

try to install it with from the terminal...

Ah, the 1 at the end was the missing piece.

Now I get error loading libmimedir-0.4.so.0

How do I tell the actual file to apt-get? I tried libmimedir, libmimedir-0, libmimedir0, libmimedir1, libmimedir-0.4, libmimedir-0.4.so, libmimedir-0.4.so.0

usually, on a desktop machine you could use apt-cache:
Unfortunately I don't have my N800 at hand (bad of me ), so I cannot check if it also works on maemo. I suspect that apt-cache is not installed on maemo (but I may be confusing with something else).

Another way: try to search the package at this page:

http://maemo.org/packages/

Apparently it's only for Fremantle, but this can give a first clue at what package to look for.

In your case, you should probably More directly related to your problem, I'm a bit surprised that your packages DB is so screwed up. You can also try to let apt-get fix the situation (it will install any missing dependency) with the following command:
(depending on how badly the situation is with your packages, this may break things even more...so be careful )

-lorelei

A mere thanks is not enough for this most EXCELLENT answer. Thank you so much for showing me how to fish, rather than just giving me something to eat!!!

Jim