[Preston] Some basic Linux questions

[Andrew King]

Databug wrote:
> Hello 
> I have a pile up of un-answered queeries regarding Linux.
> 1. What is the point of a src.rpm 

There are source rpm's. When you install them as normal:

rpm -ivh something.src.rpm

- which normally doesn't take very long, it'll unpack the sources of 
that program into /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. It'll also put a 
something.spec file in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS. You might want to do this 
if there's something in the sources you want to change (like you want 
your BASH prompt to use colourful metaphors instead of "command not 
found"), but you still want BASH to be installed as an rpm to stop 
screwing things up.

Once you've installed the source rpm, you can usually build the binary 
rpms with:

cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpm -bb something.spec

- this'll probably take a lot longer, since it's compiling everything. 
Once done, you should hopefully be able to find the binary rpms in 
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386 (or i686, etc), and you can then install them 
as normal with rpm -ivh.

Andrew