[clug] RPM/Yum commands

[Tony Breeds]

On Mon, Jun 08, 2009 at 12:18:35AM +1000, Chris Smart wrote:
> Fedora 11 is almost upon us and as always, I plan to test it out. I
> have high hopes for this release, primarily driven by the fact that
> RPM 4.7 is included which promises to provide a performance gain.
> 
> So I'm wondering if the RPM/Yummers out there could provide me with
> some tips for using them and perhaps some suggested commands? What do
> you use for everyday?

I've survided rather well with limited yum knowledege.  Fedora uses
Gnome-Package-Kit (gpk) for "most stuff" so there are GUIs for updateing your
system and like ubuntu et.al it will tell you when there are updates available.

Here's a quick run down:
gpk-prefs:
	Controls how often gpk will poll for updates, and what (if anything)
	will be automagically installed
gpk-repo:
	Controls what yum repos are enabled.
gpk-update-icon:
	Is the applet running thet checks for updates and alerts you when there
	are some.
gpk-update-viewer:
	Is the application that gpk-update-icon will run if you click on it.
	Can be handy if you /know/ there are updates but gpk-update-icon hasn't
	re-polled yet.
gpk-application:
	Roughly synaptic, install/remove software

You can interact with PackageKit with the pkcon (PackageKit CONlsoe), I was a big
fan of this for a while but I've gotten lazy and just use the GUI/GPK stuff for
package updates.

having said there there are a couple of things you may care to know about yum.

Yum repos:
	Are kept in /etc/yu.repos.d/*.repo, the format is pretty simple and
	normally they come from a *-release* rpm.
yum makecahe:
	Downlaods all the metadata, hnady if you know you're goinf to do a
	bunch of queries.  Yum will downlaod what it needs anyway but I like
	this command
yum localinstall:
	Use this to insall a .rpm file from your machine.  Better then rpm -i as it
	can use the yum repos for dependancies.
yum install/erase:
	Add/remove a package.
yum clean:
	To clean out metadata/packages.  I've only needed to use this when
	playing with rawhide.

Cool yum things to add on:
yum-downloadonly:
	Adds a --downloadonly option to yum.
yum-fastestmirror:
	Caches ping times to mirrors so you go to the fastet mirror rather than
	the one MirrorManager selected for you.
yum-presto:
	I'm pretty sure thats what it's called.  Will enable "DeltaRPMS", which
	should redice the ammount of data you need to downalod when upgrading
	packages.


Yours Tony