rpm installation in SUSE v9.x
 

I'm very new, and yesterday d/l my first rpm package. I pressed the button for YaST to install it, and thought there would be some visible response, which there wasn't. My ignorant expectation was that it would have supplied some way to access the installed program.

To investigate, I started YaST > Software > Install/RemoveSoftware > InstallationSummary, where I found the name of the package listed (alone, of course). The floating hint said "....Not available for installation", which did not clear up the confusion.

What did YaST do (or not do)? What did I not do that I should have done?

Re: rpm installation in SUSE v9.x
 

I neglected to mention that typing rpm -qa <package name> returns the correct name and version of the package. I understand this to mean that the package is properly installed. Why then can I not see a way to start the program? What must I do to remedy this?

what package did you install? Is it not available in the menu? You could try entering the package name in a terminal window to see if it runs.

Thanks for your reply.

The package is an external one, not part of the distribution. It does not appear in the menu; if it did, there would not have been a question. I'll try your suggetion when I can boot to SUSE, at the moment the machine is running OS/2.

Perhaps you could tell me what _should _ happen after an installation such as I have described. There was no report at all from YaST after I pressed the "Let YaST install" button. I gather from your sentence that the program should appear in the Start menu, is that correct? In its first level, or somewhere else?

This program is a native one. Suppose it were a Java program. How would I set up an envelope for it to run in? This "SUSE 9 Bible" book ignores that scenario entirely. I would need a command file; have you a suggestion for where to find a model for such a script and how to use it?

Thanks again...

I don't use yast to install rpms manually, I do it in the command line so that I can see the output. ry doing the following,
The first command checks that the package is installed and the second one lists all the files installed on your system belonging to that package. The executable should be in /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin or other appropriate directories.

I am running SUSE 9.2 too. Sometimes, when you right click on a rpm and select 'install with yast', it does not happen. I do not know if it is a bug and I don't really care. What I would do is use the terminal, login as root, cd to the rpm's directory and execute
With this command, the old version of the package will automatically be uninstalled before the newer version is installed. Always use rpm -Uvh to install packages, since it works fine even when there are no previous versions of the package installed. If there are dependencies, it will also tell you what other packages are required for a successful installation.

Suppose you have a lot of packages (as rpms) present in a diectory (say /home/joe/rpms) then you need to add that directory to installation sources before you can install them using Yast [by the 'Yast2->Add/Remove Programs->search' method]. You can find the 'Change Installation Source' option under software category of Yast.

Hope this helps you!