Easy RPM How-to

[iphitus]

I know many people out there pull out there hair with RPMs.

They can be so easy if you know what to do.

The first thing you should do is setup urpmi

 

With urpmi at a console you can simply type

su

Then your root password

Then

 

urpmi xmms

 

And it will download and install XMMS and dependencies for you.

Of course you can replace 'xmms' with abiword, gimp, xine, gaim and more.

eg urpmi freecraft

 

To allow urpmi to do the above you need to add sources to it

Here is a site which gives you the exact commands to type as root to add sources

 

Easy URPMI

http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/urpmiweb.php

 

THere is also a GUI tool to do the above. However I think it is only for Mandrake 9.1. It is called urpmi.setup

YOu can get an RPM at

http://rpmseek.com/rpm-dl/urpmi.setup-web-...PN:0:0:0:538383

Pick a mirror near you. For Australians you can get an rpm at ftp://public.ftp.planetmirror.com/pub/man...4mdk.noarch.rpm

It might need some extra rpms too. I reccomend the first way, with the command line, then maybe install urpmi.setup with urpmi urpmi.setup

 

However not everything is on the urpmi sources.

To find rpms for other programs not in urpmi's sources here are some great sites to get RPMS

 

www.rpmfind.net

rpm.pbone.net

www.rpmseek.com

 

Simply go to one of these sites and search for what you want.

Once you download it to install it

cd to the directory you downloaded it.

then either

urpmi rpmname.rpm

OR

rpm -i rpmname.rpm

 

urpmi will download the dependencies if you don't have them and they're on it's sources, rpm -i will give you an error if they're not on your computer.

Sometimes urpmi doesn't have rpms for the dependencies.

This is where most people get frustrated, a string of dependencies.

To find rpms of dependencies

I go to www.rpmseek.com

then select

'what provides'

'includes file' or

'package name'

depending on what's needed.

Then just put your search term in the box below.

Tip: Often if you have an newer version of the dependency and the program wants an older one and programs or the system depend on the newer one, or vice versa, look for a compat rpm.

eg libpng3-compat

 

You've finally got all the software you want but it's been a few weeks/months since you installed it all. To update it all, all you need to do is su to root and type

 

urpmi --auto-select

 

This however will give you some complaints about GPG signatures(see below) on the files.

To automatically ignore this, instead of the above use:

 

urpmi --auto-select --no-verify-rpm --auto

 

Hope this helps, if you can't find an RPM that'll work, post here on MDK Users, email me rcxau(at)yahoo.com.au or your best option: compile from source.

 

GPG signatures: Often you will be asked whether or not to install an RPM because urpmi can't verify the signature. Most of the time this its fine to install it. I always do.

 

 

Good Luck!!!

 

James

 

EDIT: Added command to update

 

EDIT: Added urpmi.setup

[shen]

nice post..very helpfull

[CarlJF]

If it can help, if I have done a tutorial on that topic for the GUI of Mandrake: http://www.uselinuxathome.com/ENinstsoft.htm

 

Hope it helps someone!