I am trying to install some packages on RH8 (using the GUI for GNOME) but I am having problems. I get a "Packages Not Found". This seems to be due to the fact that I updated some packages using RHN.

For example one error is that it can't find: krb5-libs-1.2.5-6

If I do rpm -qa |grep krb I find that I have krb5-libs-1.2.5-8 installed a newer version then it wants. It isn't smart enough to know that the version I have is sufficient.

This problem keeps getting worse the more updates I do using RHN as I have this problem with several packages including openldap, cyrus-sasl, and pam as well as krb5-libs all of which I updated since instaling recently.

Every time I update using RHN I get more dependency problems.

How do I fix this?

What packages are you trying to install exactly?

I am trying to install some of the Development Tools Extra Packages, but this problem doesn't seem to be directly related to that. The reason I need these is to get some Perl modules to work and the reason I need that is ...

I am new to Linux and whenver you try to install one thing it seems to open up about a million dependencies.

I am pretty sure that the problem is related to RH wanting a specific package and not being smart enough to know that the said package has been updated. I have found other posts where people have this problem, but I haven't found a post with a solution.

Next time I install Linux I am going to install everything up front!

That would be a good idea.

RPM is generally smart enough to know whether the version you have is sufficient or not, however package authors sometimes aren't. Also, just because you have a higher version number doesn't necessarily imply the packages are compatable, this isn't Windows and stuff sometimes breaks backwards compatability.

But yes, redhat does suck at dependancy management. Linux sucks at it in general really, only Debian doesn't, but that's often out of date and Debian has other issues anyway.

OK so now I know what to do the next time I install linux. What should I do for now, force install packages with RPM? Do a complete reinstall of RH 8 and install all of the dev packages? Will I not then have to reinstall everything else I have added since then, which is mainly Perl.

If you really need to install these packages then give it what it wants. Uninstall the krb5-libs-1.2.5-8 package and install the older krb5-libs-1.2.5-6 package.