[Gllug] Installing Stuff?

[gllug at uncertainty.org.uk]

> 
> > try man rpm
> 
> A bewildering array of options ... er .. .thanks :-)
> 
there is also a 'book' Maximum rpm on RedHats website

Covers much more than you need to know but does cover the basics well

This is also true for the man pages - much of it deals with creating
rpms from source - just skip over those bits. 

> 
> > rpmfind.net is very helpful - often once you have found out what the
> > package is you may be able to find a copy locally
> 
> So they don't keep an archive of the files (I'll check later)
> 
oh no - that's not what I meant.

The *do* have an enourmous archive - I just meant that you could
probably save a lot of download time if you have a recent install disk
around - mind you - often packages are quite small and downloading is
faster than finding them on disk.

BTW http://fr.rpmfind.net is the french mirror - which is a good deal
closer than the USA main server. (I thought the net was suppoosed to
make geography irrelavent but apparently not)

> > some of these things may be for packges you don't need eg kdelibs-devel
> > -doc looks like a package of documentation aimed at developers - you
> > may just be able to leave out this package and so not have to
> > worry about its dependancies.
> 
> But presumably it is not installing if it generates these messages or is it
> installing and highlighting the dependencies

you are right in that it is not installing it

but it is trying to and maybe it doesn't need to .

You downloaded a bunch of stuff from kde and then run rpm -i(whatver) *

what I'm saying is that you could try moving the developer docs rpm out
of this directory before running rpm -i *

Then it won't be installed and you won't have to satisfy any
dependencies for it - if it turns out that you do need it for something
you can install it then.

>  ... if so (assuming I run such
> commands from a terminal session) where does it install to? Does it (like
> Opera) place shortcuts (symbolic links) in the KDE menu, on the desktop or
> do I have to go find the application that runs it (and if so how do I know
> what it's called beyond an educated guess at, say, "kword").
> 

it installs to wherever it is set in the rpm package (not sure if there
is a way of changing this without recompiling the rpm) 
menu items, shortcuts etc may be part of the package - but there is no
standard.

this is where the rpm query tools can come in handy 

for uninstalled packages

rpm -qi --package logcheck-1.1.1-6mdk.i586.rpm 

for installed packages 
rpm -qa | grep somepackage # gives you the exact name

rpm -qi exact-name 

gives an overview of that package

rpm -q --list (tells you all the files it installs and where they go)

rpm -q --list | grep bin (should help you find the command you need to
run it)

> More importantly than that am I asking way too many questions?
>
 
not really - it helps that you have been very clear about what you have
done and what the problem is - also your questions aren't so basic that
people either ignore them or all reply at once. But they are simple
enough that I can canswer them :)

-- 

Sean


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