2. Packages, Tools and Repositories
Modern Linuxes are rapidly moving towards a world in which physical
media are used for OS installation only, with updates being fetched and
installed by tools querying Internet repositories. You'll need to know a
bit about some of these tools and the repositories they get binary packages
from.
Fedora packages are called RPMs. Each can be installed or uninstalled
as a unit, and provides some application together with any support files it
needs. Some packages depend on others — an application, for example,
may require specific support libraries. Part of the job a package
installation program does is to chase down those dependencies and install
them before installing the main package.
Unfortunately, RPMs can clash with each other — for example, by
wanting to put incompatible versions of a command or support file in place.
A repository maintainer's main job is to make sure that (a) the RPMs in his
collection don't clash with each other, and (b) all their dependencies are
resolved either within his repository or some 'base' repository that he
advertises depending on.
There is one base repository for Fedora Linux maintained by the
Fedora project itself, and about half a dozen extension repositories that
depend on that base. These extension or "third-party" repositories are
where you will get your Damned Things; they are run by volunteers
independent of the Fedora Project, often located in places outside the
U.S. where they will be less exposed to predatory lawyers.
The extension repositories form cliques defined by who is compatible
with who else. There is a lot of turbulence and politics around these
cliques which, as an end user, you can largely ignore. The only reason
for you to know about this at all is that you have to choose one clique
in order to avoid clashes. In early 2006 there are, essentially, three
cliques to choose from, as I'll describe later on.
First I need to introduce you to the tools you will need to fetch
your Damned Things:
- yum
yum (the Yellow Dog Updater, Modified), is a command-line
tool that comes installed
with Fedora Core. It will help you download updates from the Fedora
repository, and from other repositories that carry Damned Things that
Fedora won't.
- pirut
This is a GUI wrapper around yum introduced in FC5. It's a
slightly kinder, gentler way to use yum.
You also need to know about some repositories. Each is a collection
of RPMs, divided into subcollections called 'channels'.
- fedora.redhat.com
This is the basic Fedora repository. The RPMs in the
'stable' and 'updates' channels of this repo are what go on a Fedora
CD-ROM. Historical note for readers of previous version of this document:
the Red Hat repo now includes, in its 'extras' part, equivalents of the
stuff that used to be at fedora.us.
- RPMForge
A clique formed by all the major third-party RPM sites
except livna and ATrpms. These packages are intended to extend the Fedora
Core and Extras repositories, and the maintainers are careful not to clash
with the Fedora repositories. The consortium includes freshrpms, Dag
Wieers's repository, the Dries repository, NewRPMs and PlanetCCRMA.
They're working towards merging their repositories, and already build with
common source RPMS. Unfortunately, the RPMForge collection is known to
have some serious clashes with livna and ATRPMs.
- rpm.livna.org
A site, located outside the U.S. and beyond the reach of
the DMCA, that specifically dedicated to providing Damned Things that
Fedora Core and Extras won't carry. There is no official connection, and
in fact the Fedora people won't mention livna in their web pages or
documentation for fear of being slammed with a speech-suppressing lawsuit
by the evil scumweasels at the DVDCCA, but the livna people track what
Fedora does very closely. The livna repositories depend on the Fedora
repositories. They clash with the RPMForge repositories.
- http://macromedia.mplug.org/
The main source for packaged versions of Macromedia
Flash. It's safe to use this RPM with any of the extension-repository
cliques.
The three cliques I referred to earlier are RPMForge, livna (all by
itself) and ATrpms (all by itself). With FC5 you can get all the
multimedia support you theoretically need from livna, rather than using
RPMforge as I advised in previous versions of this FAQ. I say
'theoretically' because, in fact, almost none of the video stuff actually
works in FC5.
To enable access to livna, do this:
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm
|
This should drop a yum repo configuration file in
/etc/yum.repos.d/
Free eBook: 
