RPM installation gives "error: cannot create %sourcedir /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES"
 

hi friendz,

i am trying to install ethereal rpm with root privileges with the following command
rpm -ivh --aid /home/praveen/softwares/ethereal-0.8.16-1.i386.rpm
i got the following error
error: cannot create %sourcedir /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES

one more thing...how ro install dependencies if there are any??

regards,
praveen darshanam

Regarding the "cannot create..." error, maybe you miss the rpm-build package. Install that first, since it should take care of creating /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES when needed. Then retry the installation of the ethereal package.

To install dependencies, you can try to use an interface to the rpm command which takes care of dependencies for you. On RedHat like systems you can try yum, on OpenSuse you can try zypper. Which Linux are you running on?

The message is saying it could not create the directory /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES

I am guessing, but I would suspect that the /usr/src/redhat directory doesn't exist, therefore when it tries to create a sub-directory it fails.

run: ls /usr/src/redhat

If it tells you "No such file or directory" then create one (as root):
mkdir /usr/src/redhat

i created the directory SOURCES then i was able to install.

when i am running yum command iam getting an error regarding [repo] and the command closes.

i am trying to install ethereal on FC2.

thanx for the help.

FC2 is like 5 years old, hopelessly outdated, vulnerable and should not be used. Next to that you're not installing an RPM package but a source (.src.rpm) package so your posted commandline can not be true. If you want Fedora then please keep up with releases. It's F10 now, thanks.

Please, post the exact error message (paste and copy from a terminal embedding in CODE tags) otherwise we cannot be of much help.

Edit: I agree to unSpawn's comment!