RPM or Yum?
 

Hello everyone,

I am fairly new to the linux world so let me apologize in advance if I say something that isn't quite correct.

what is the best way to update packages? I know RPM is there, but I've heard some people refer to it as dependency hell. I've also heard some people talk about Yum (never used it) and they say it's much better. So, I wanted to gage and see what everyone thought of as the better way to update packages.

Thanks :)

well you should use YUM period. Its much more easier than figuring out dependencies. But before you start using it you will have to add repositories to your yum.conf file so that you can fetch packages from all major sources

good repos are
http://www.dag.wieers.com
http://rpm.livna.org
http://www.fedora.us

#man yum - to find out more on YUM.

#yum update - to update the sync local repos with the remote repos...

#yum install <package name> and dependencies will be taken care of.

Google for yum repositories and you'll get many hits...

Tuxrules

p.s: didn't notice you were on red hat...these repos also have red hat packages...so you should be good.

tuxrules,

Thanks a lot for your reply. I kinda figured you might say yum, I have heard a lot of good things about it. I think I will suggest it here at work. We are currently running all our applications of windows 2k server but our new IT director is wanting to go to linux, so all these questions came up. Thanks again

:)

A very good alternative to yum is apt, if you would like to try that out at some point. It has a good gui frontend called synaptic.

Yum also hat a frontend called 'gyum',

I don't have RHEL, but if it is like the other Red Hat products it comes with up2date. up2date will find and install any dependencies you need. If for example you didn't have XFree86 installed you could type up2date XFree86 at a command line and it would get everything you need and install it.

Just to give you a little more info, all of the packages mentioned - yum, apt, up2date and a few others use rpm to do the real installation work behind the scenes. RPM has its uses too, especially when dealing with src.rpm's and tar.gz's that include spec files.

Bill

So what is a Repository? What(how) do I do with them?

Actually yum, apt, and up2date all use RPMs. What makes them easier is that they automate the process of checking for updates, downloading, checking/obtaining dependencies, and installing the RPMs.

All that to say that a repository is a collection of RPMs and header files used in the process automation. This means that repositories will be specific to the tool being used a typically is just a remote directory accessed by ftp or http.

Of the three tools mentioned I'm kinda partial to yum, but apt repositories are easier to find. But, still check the rep of your repository.

Actually, apt is from Debian distribution and works with dpkg. RPMS support is added afterward. Debian is a REAL good distribution for servers. Have a look at <http://www.debian.org/>. Good news is that it's a new version in the pipline now (named testing).

They have automatic update (and for security to) for years.

But if you have support from someone else, you should use what they have.

Repository is a storage for packages (or other type of files). It could be ftp or http-site.

In this instance switching to Debian does not help the person who asked the question understand more about rpms.

I still don't get it, do I download Repository and add add it to yum or what not?

You don't download a repository. A repository is a site where rpms for a specific distribution are stored and they can be downloaded from there manually or installed on your system using package managment tools such as yum or apt. The most common repositoris for Fedora are fedora.us, fedoraproject and third party repositories are freshrpms, dag etc. if you use these rpm repositories in conjunction with a package manager such as apt or yum, package management is easy because all dependencies for that particular package are autoatically resolvd, meaning that you don't have to worry about installing each individual dependent package manually.

You add your repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list for apt and /etc/yum.conf for YUM. To find out more information about apt and youm, go to dags website and freshrpms. Also do a search on google and you will come up with more documenation.

What is the difference between YUM and yum?

Same difference. :) Its the same thing, some capitise others don't. I sometimes capitalise because YUM stands for YellowDog Update Manager.

The best way to learn about YUM is from here ---> http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/

Here is the digested version:

Think of a repository as a web site with the filles that you may require to install or update.

You configure a YUM client to access repositories (YUM servers)

To configure a repository you add a repository definition file to your computer.

Some distributions already come with a few repositories configured. (e.g. fedora core 3 has fedora and fedora-updates)

When you find a repository that you like, you normally download the configuration file from the repository home page or follow the instructions provided there.

For example in Fedora core 3 to access the freshrpms repository you need to create the following file

the content of that file is something like

You can configure multiple repositories. Most packages exist in more than one repository so if you find that a repository has the same packages as another but with a different version, you explicitly exclude the packages you don't want (read the "man yum" for the details)

I hope this summary made it clearer for you.