Okay Ill Admit it ... I'm still learning ...!

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

Thank you for writing a brilliant general-purpose message that itself
belongs in the FAQ. Only problem is that while it seems to be aimed at
people unfamiliar with RPM dependency hell, it expects that same audience
to be able to extrapolate YDL4 info from a YDL3 FAQ page. My message was
not general-purpose, but gave a specific command line to use in the
specific situation that arose, where dependencies would be completely a
non-issue because all the possible dependencies were already downloaded
into the same directory and would be picked up by the rpm command
together. Such is the limitation of getting help on a mailing list: The
general-purpose stuff that everybody should see nobody sees, and the
specific-situation stuff is open to Google for other people to mis-apply.

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 20:36:42 -0500, Derick Centeno wrote:

>> 
>> From: Daniel Gimpelevich <daniel at gimpelevich.san-francisco.ca.us>
>> Date: 2005/03/06 Sun PM 07:05:34 EST
>> To: yellowdog-general at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
>> Subject: Re: Okay Ill Admit it ... I'm still learning ...!
>> 
>> If they are updates, do not use the -i option. Use:
>> rpm -Uvh /var/cache/yum/updates/packages/*.rpm
>> Your original mistake was most likely not editing /etc/yum.conf to point
>> to an Australian mirror (the mirror.pacific.net.au one is good) prior to
>> issuing a "yum update" command. Don't use the default settings in that
>> file.
>> 
> 
> In addition to what Mr. Gimpelevich advised I would recommend that your 
> yum.conf read as discussed in the YDL FAQ site, here's a link to one page which 
> may be useful:
> 
> http://www.sharplabs.com:8668/space/yum/Getting+your+Feet+Wet
> 
> If you want more information just type "yum", without the quotes into the 
> search field and follow on reading whatever comes up.
> 
> Although others have advised installing packages using the rpm command, as is
> rpm -i, the problem in using that method is the fact that you would have to 
> know ALL the dependencies used by the packages you are trying to install and 
> install each dependent program separately also using rpm -i.  IT DOES GET WORSE 
> as some dependencies also have dependencies!  You may well forget in proceeding 
> with this process what you wanted to install in the first place!  The whole 
> point of using yum is that yum searches, finds and installs ALL the dependent 
> and interdependent packages FOR YOU.
> 
> To ANSWER your original question, after you have completed the update process, 
> as you reported you did, doing something similar to 
> 
> #yum update __________
> 
> The _________ represents whatever package you updated.  Let's say you were 
> interested in updating xine...suppose you don't know what's available you could  
> do either 
> 
> #yum check_update xine
> 
> or 
> 
> #yum search xine
> 
> The search command will pull-up all plug-ins and other packages available and 
> which are already installed.  The check_update command will list which updates 
> are available and which are installed.  Make a note somewhere of the available 
> list which interests you and if it is listed as installed, then you can update 
> that package as in
> 
> #yum update xine_goom
> 
> or 
> 
> #yum update xine*
> 
> the * is a neat trick as it will allow ANY and ALL xine related packages to be 
> updated that are available and not yet installed, without you naming any 
> explicitly.
> 
> If you just do 
> 
> #yum update
> 
> yum will update whatever you have already installed.
> 
> After either process is complete there is NOTHING else to do as all the latest 
> repositories would have been searched for the latest packages/dependencies 
> which would have been then downloaded for you by yum.
> 
> If you want to double check that xine is in fact installed you could do
> 
> yum install xine
> 
> and yum would tell you that it is already installed and the package version it 
> has is the latest available package.  This step is only provided for those who 
> feel good in double and triple checking things.
> 
> Best wishes...
> 
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