question on yum or rpm

[Deepak Seth_1]

hello folks ,

new to RHEL /Linux , question on yum or rpm . If i need to install a s/w like "expect" , how do achive the following
- how do i know what dependent rpm i need to download for "expect" ?
- how to install them using yum (like using yum localhost ...)
- compiling from source is a big challenge for me as i know i probably be missing lots of other pkg like gcc etc

just confused with patch management . Its so easy with HP depot...

[Ivan Krastev]

See this yum howto - http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/yum_HOWTO/yum_HOWTO/

Chapter 11 is for installing/updating packages.

regards,
ivan

[Deepak Seth_1]

thanks Ivan. Useful document . I spend many hours today trying installing "expect" by downloading it . But still couldn't do it .
Any tips on how should i have gone about searching an rpm's and its dependents so i can install them easily.

this is what i downloaded (took many hours of googling )

expect-5.43.0-5.1.i386.rpm
expect-devel-5.43.0-9.fc8.i386.rpm
expectk-5.43.0-9.fc8.i386.rpm

tried rpm and yum localinstall but no luck . looks like something either wrong with my downloads or way of installing.

[Ivan Krastev]

If you have already the rpm install it with:

rpm -ivh expext....rpm

see man page for more details.

regards,
ivan

[Matti_Kurkela]

If you have a RHEL system registered with RedHat Network, installing expect is very simple:

# yum install expect

Yum will automatically contact RedHat's servers, find the latest available version of expect for your distribution, find out which dependent packages are needed, ask you if it's OK to download them too, and then automatically download & install everything.

Other distributions have their own repository servers on the Internet. If you can access them, you don't need to download anything manually.

MK

[KarloChacon]

like Ivan said just rpm -ivh ...rpm
if the rpm file needs something before installing it will tell you some other package(s) are needed in order to install this package


or you can try this rpm -qpR ...rpm it will tell all packages needed to install it but it will provide you all of them so kinda big list the point is some of them are already installed but -ivh will tell which exactly are needed during installation.

[Deepak Seth_1]

thanks Karlo. Here is what i get

rpm -ivh expect-5.43.0-5.1.i386.rpm
warning: expect-5.43.0-5.1.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 652e84dc
error: Failed dependencies:
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) is needed by expect-5.43.0-5.1.i386

This means now i need to find GLIBC_2.4 rpm . This is little painful . No easy way , except setting repo server and using RHN ?

Please excure me if some of my points are not making sense . Migrating from HPUX to RHEL is not fun . But i will get there .

[KarloChacon]

yeah now it's up to you

continuing rpm command or setting up a repo

just check this I looked for your

expect-5.43.0-5.1.i386

and see what I found
ok this does not mean you need to install all those packages first maybe some of them are already there but you know FYI

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/12379394/com/expect-5.43.0-5.1.i386.rpm.html

http://www.icewalkers.com/rpm/expect/fedora-core-6/download/expect-1780.html

bye

[Randy Jones_3]

Deepak, if this is an RHEL5 system try "yum install expect" as Matti suggested. If the system is RHEL4, try "up2date -iv expect".

It will be easier than trying to install the files you downloaded.

[dirk dierickx]

believe me, once you know how a package manager works on linux, you never want to go back to the horrors of sw-depots.

first, you need to forget everything that you know, it probably doesn't apply to linux package management anyway.

second, be sure you have an internet connection, i'm guessing you don't have your own repository at present.

to answer your questions:

- how do i know what dependent rpm i need to download for "expect" ?

A: you don't need to, that is the job of the package manager to find out. you ask the package manager to install 'expect', he'll figure out everything else.

searching for packages use one of the following:

yum list
yum search
yum provides

these will display aavilable possible packages to install.

- how to install them using yum (like using yum localhost ...)

A: you shouldn't be doing that, get your packages from a repository. don't you have internet access? are you using RH without a license and no access to RH reps? if so, use CentOS. it's RH, but free and 100% compatible.

- compiling from source is a big challenge for me as i know i probably be missing lots of other pkg like gcc etc

A: don't do that unless you know what you are doing. which looks like you don't. learn to use a package manager first, read the documentation on it (meaning yum AND rpm) and then, perhaps, think about building your own packages.

see both warnings at the end of this page (it's about centos, but applies to ALL linux distros):
http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/SourceInstalls