Talk:Yum

Manuals and Info

My OLPC installation doesn't seem to have "man".

That is correct.--Mokurai 14:09, 7 January 2008 (EST)

How do we get packages?

yum install <package name>

"info yum" doesn't show any useful information.

Any *nix documentation I've ever needed was available as a Web page. In some cases a reference manual or tutorial can also be found. For yum, google "yum manual". Regards, Peasthope 16:53, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Repositories

This page needs to document how to add a repository. Where is yum.conf?--Mokurai 14:09, 7 January 2008 (EST)

yum? yuck!

I got brave and made some changes to the article itself, making some of my comments below obsolete.

(my background: I worked with various unix's from about 1980 to 1995, participated in G1G1 to learn a bit about olpc. The machine is nice, but my experience so far has not been very good. I am on this page now because I was at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Terminal_Activity and was reading about:

{{ Common Terminal Commands

   * sugar-control-panel - Change nickname, XO Color, time zone and other options
   * ifconfig - View Wireless Network connections
   * nano for editing text files directly. If you want to edit text files in Sugar, use Write.
   * yum for automatically installing new software.
   * rpm - another way to automatically install new software
   * olpc-logbat - log the activity of the battery system. Useful for assisting developers in debugging battery problems.
}}

and I want to learn about yum and what can I install and how )

If "man" is not on olpc, why does the article page say to use it?

---

So I tried "info yum", and it looked like emacs came up, and the help it gave didn't help at all. Most people won't how to quit if they get put into emacs or vi inadvertantly. I had mostly used vi 10-20 years ago, I know :q!, but I'm not sure in emacs. I thought it might be ctrl-q ctrl-q, or ctrl-c ctrl-q, I did ctrl-q twice, and the terminal process died.

The article page should not tell novice users to run "info".

Certainly true. The instructions on this page should suffice to use yum to reinstall a broken package or to add a desired package. Full documentation of yum is available in Web pages. Further comments follow under "Memory Limitations". Regards, ... Peasthope 17:54, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

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What I really want to know about yum is what <package>'s can be installed. Are there a bunch of packages that come with olpc, or do I first have to download them first?

Can I (uh, what is the syntax and command line options for yum, I want to view the previous window, but if I go back, I will probably lose all this text I have just typed... (I can copy and go back, not being able to view more than one window at a time, not having tabbed browsing, and not even being able to quickly flip between windows is making "sugar" more difficult to use than it should be...) Anyways, can I

yum -install opera

yum -install firefox

yum -install XP #just joking

If you run yum without arguments, you'll be presented an aide-mémoire. The most relevant cases you'll want are yum list available to see what is available from the yum repository, yum install updates to bring your software up-to-date (not just Sugary software), and yum install name-of-program.

A case example: I happen to like KSpread (the KDE spreadsheet program). First, I check to see if KSpread is available from the repositories using yum list "*kspread*". Note that I've included wildcards; if I hadn't used them, yum would say there are no packages matching my request because the package I want is "koffice-kspread", not "kspread". Next, I run yum install "koffice-kspread".

Yum will do package dependency resolution for a while. If it's successful, yum will tell you what it wants to download and how much space it'll need; if not, it'll tell you why.

Now, I chose KSpread for a reason: it has a lot of internationalization/localization files. I can exclude these files from being downloaded by running yum install "koffice-kspread" --exclude="*lang*". And with that, the yum crash course is complete: how to find, update, select, and exclude packages for installation. As for Firefox, I'd recommend using the Sugarized version.

■ NeoAmsterdam^Talk_Edits2010-02-12T06:56:48Z 06:56, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Memory Limitations

Software breakage happens and yum is essential for successful ongoing use of the system.

"On recent builds leading to release 10.1.3, there may not be enough memory to use yum."

Well 12.1.0 was released 2012-08-31 and the quoted remark is outdated by more than a year. Memory is definitely problematic for yum running in Gnome and in Sugar.

"unmounting /var/cache/yum will write yum data to the root filesystem. This is the way yum normally works, ..."

Interesting and somewhat reassuring but what exactly should the user with limited background do? How is /var/cache/yum unmounted? Shouldn't it be emptied before unmounting? What happens when the yum data clogs the root filesystem rather than /var/cache/yum?

"any network connection mediated by Sugar [or nm in Gnome] will be terminated, so make a connection using shell commands before trying yum."

Given the automation of network services in Gnome and in Sugar, merely telling users to "make a connection using shell commands" is absolutely unrealistic. It's a show-stopper for the majority of users.

No offense intended but this page is an inadequate collection of hints. It should be rewritten to give straightforward instructions so that a user with limited background can operate yum to reinstall a broken package or install a desired additional package. Regards, ... Peasthope 17:45, 7 November 2012 (UTC)