[TriLUG] RH8 red hat packages

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Wed, 2003-02-12 at 08:57, Sinner from the Prairy wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 February 2003 08:12 am, Morris Walton wrote:
> > Hi,
> 
> Hi,
> 
> > The RH8 package manager seems a little bit too dumbed down to me.  I
> > have downloaded the entire distribution and installed all that I
> > wanted.  Now when I want to install another package, I can't tell If it
> > comes with the distribution and if it does if I have installed it or
> > not.  It would be good to have a list of the packages on the
> > distribution that I haven't installed yet.  Does anybody know how to do
> > that?

When you say the "RH8 package manager" -- are you referring to the
program called "redhat-config-packages" that can be started from the
menu system?  I agree that it's fairly limited, and the beta for the
next version of Red Hat Linux has a lot of improvements.  But it still
should show you which packages you have installed by navigating through
the check-boxes.

To install additional packages that are part of the distribution, I
suggest using the "up2date" program which can download them from Red Hat
Network.  Use "up2date -i <packagename>" to install a specific package.

Even better, consider installing apt for rpm from
http://freshrpms.net/apt/ .  That site also has quite a few RPMs built
for Red Hat Linux 8.0 of programs that Red Hat doesn't include in the
standard distribution.

> Try checking on http://rpmfind.net to look for existing rpms for the 
> application that you want to install. Then, check from the results if it's on 
> any Red Hat 8.0 rpm (for your architechture, chances are it's a i386).
> 
> If it's there, use RedHat package manager, 'cause it's there somewhere.
> 
> If it's not there, you have a few options:
> - get a Mandrake 9.0 / ASP Linux 7.3 rpm for the same app. Those two are 
> pretty close to RedHat 8.0, so chances are that it would work.

Ack!  If a Mandrake binary RPM works on Red Hat 8.0, it's a real
miracle.  This option is not for the faint of heart!
 
> - get a Mandrake 9.0 / ASP Linux 7.3 SRPM for the same app. Then, rebuild the 
> RPM for your machine. It will most probably work. Maybe you'll need to change 
> a little the specs file.

Ack!  I don't recommend this either for a new user, but has more chance
of working then the previous option.

--Jeremy