Hi all,

I am new in linux and I really need help from you guys.

I need a help in installing softwares in FC5 and by the way my computer is connecting to internet. I know this problem is a repeating problem because I had searched in lots of threads but I am still unable to solve it.

First I used Pirut and it produced an error saying "unable to retrieve sofware information." I searched for the threads that already discussed this problem. One of the solutions says that I have to connect to internet and I do, second I have to remove "#" baseurl line in /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. I did that and it still produced that error messages.

After that I try to update yum first by "yum update" in the command line, and I run pirut again. Now the error says "Unable to retrieve software information. This could be caused by not having a network connection available."

Second, I install yumex, once it finished I run it. But when initializing repositories the progress bar was stuck in 10% and after that it produced another error message saying "error in loading repositories data : failure: repodata/repomd.xml from updates: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try."

Third, I run yum -install, I gave up with Gui and I tried to find a specific package and install it using yum, and it still produce an error message "unable to retrieve sofware information."

My computer seems connected to internet, I am able to browse the internet using Mozilla, but if I ping google, I dont have anything on my screen.

heaps of thanks in advance

/etc/yum.repos.d/ includes files for your reposities ("storage areas" on the net, where the packages are downloaded). If you can run yum update fine, like you sound, yum should work itself all right. Next step is to make sure the reposities are working and ok, so go to /etc/yum.repos.d and cat the files inside -- there ought to be URLs, so try to ping them first. You should also use Google to find out (other) mirrors for FC5, like Livna, and add those reposities to your /etc/yum.repos.d (just like the other files there) -- then do yum update and with yum try to install something from these mirrors.

I myself found yum a bit difficult to use, but as I said, if the update is working and produces no errors, then it sounds like it's something with the reposities. If no mirror URL from the reposities works, yum gives an error (no more mirrors to try) because it doesn't know where to look anymore. That's why it's essential to find at least one mirror that works for sure and try out with it first. If that fails, it means the problem resides on your machine and/or connection, but if that succeeds, it means the problem is with the mirrors.

My gueess would be that your network uses multiple lines to connect to the internet,ie., there might be two or more ISPs serving your computer (usually happens in large networks). This might cause problem when using yum or pirut, etc.

Check your SELinux /etc/selinux
Maybe it blocks your icmp package.

Regards

If you are behind a proxy, then add
proxy=http://myproxy:myport to /etc/yum.conf