Re: installing rpms

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

Marty wrote:
> > Can someone direct me to some directions on the web to 
> > install/upgrade rpms ?

Don wrote:
> Not to sound condesending but have your tried "man rpm" ?

I can cheerfully use rpm to install, upgrade, remove, find out
which package owns which file, find what depends on what, find
all the files included in an rpm, unpack a source rpm to look
at the stuff inside it, and build a binary from a source rpm.

But 'man rpm' scares me. 

Really, if all you want to do at first is install, upgrade or
remove, 'man rpm' is overkill and incomprehensible. 'rpm --help' 
is also a bit long: you have to do 'rpm --help | more' to be able 
to see it all!

There are quite a few documents on rpm about. The obvious one is
"Maximum RPM" which is available in book form from your local
bookshop and on the web for free at www.rpm.org in PostScript
or LaTeX form (which I guess means you need ghostview and hence
X running or a printer available. It's probably cheaper to buy
the book than to print it out yourself.) The most useful thing
I got from that book was that to any upgrade/install rpm command 
you can append --test, which means it will run through the rest of
what you told it to do without actually doing it, and so you
know whether it will work or not :) Then you can run it without
the --test :)

You can find the RPM HOWTO at several sites on the web. The
most up to date seems to be the one at www.oswg.org - go
to Documents Catalog then User Documentation then RPM. The
URL is a bit long, mind you :) And again, it's mostly aimed
at people wanting to build rpms.

Finally, since this is gnome-list, here's GnoRPM documentation:
start GnoRPM and click on help to find a great introduction and
instructions on how to install, remove and upgrade RPMs, or look
at the relevant section of the RH 6.0 installation manual online at
http://www.redhat.com/support/manuals/RHL-6.0-Manual/install-guide/manual/doc077.html#s10

For people who don't like command lines, GnoRPM is very very
handy. And so is the documentation for it. 

Telsa