[Gllug] Installing Stuff?

[Ian Scott]

A word of warning on the distro's rpm package manager "programs" (eg. YaST,
rpmdrake, etc).

A big problem with these is that you don't necessarily know what they
are doing.  They may well resolve dependancies automatically, but they
may also just install rpms, and ignore dependancies!

I learnt to my cost that YaST does this - it happily sorts out SuSE
dependancies, but if you try to use it to install other rpms, it will
just install them and ignore dependancies!!!  I learnt this when I
tried to install a load of Mandrake rpms on to my SuSE 6.4 system, and
managed to trash my box, because it overwrote a load of system stuff.
Ooops.  I did manage to recover it, but I had to boot off the CD and
forcefully reinstall the base SuSE packages!

I now use the commandline, so I know when I'm overwriting stuff.

Incidently, if you know you want to install even though you haven't
got all the dependancies (eg. missing some doc packages), use the
--nodeps option.

If you want to install cross-distro rpms, you might also find they
won't install because they will overwrite files.  To force an install,
you can use --replacefiles - but backing up the replaced files first
is probably a good idea!

Having flamed it, YaST is useful, because it will install lots of rpms
at once - but you need to be careful you know what it's doing.

NB. This refers to yast1.  Yast 2 may be better.


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