How to build rpms for RHEL4 Updates srpms
 

This note is what I wish someone else had posted before i spent half a day hacking it out for myself. It seems sort of simple now, but this may save someone else a similar fate.
If you grabbed the free 30-day support RHEL4 Desktop iso's, and your month is gone, and you want to get on the free updates bandwagon,here it is:
ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/ etc, etc click through to the updates/enterprise to your particular beast
download the SRPMS that are newest for your os
open the terminal, as root, and do:
rpm -ivh packagename.src.rpm
go to /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
select the srpm spec file:
rpmbuild packagename.spec
this bulds the install packages in /SOURCES, then build your rpm by doing:
rpmbuild -ba packagename.spec
after compile is done, it will rebuild the SRPM, install it in SRPMS, and your new RPM packages will be placed in RPMS, ready to install, by doing:
rpm -ivh --nodeps packagename.i386.rpm
the reason for the --nodeps, is you will enter dependency Hell if you have a multiple package rpm produced for the install.
Hope this helps someone out there.
-O.

You could also just use CentOS. This will save the time and effort spent rebuilding rpms.

excellent product, i played with centos a little.
so call me picky. i prefer the reliability of one set of well-established mirrors and files therein, and the absolute control over the rpms themselves. if something breaks, i'll have the fix right now, or the how-to on fixing it myself, soon enough. i'll not have to wait excruciating amounts of time till someone's slagged-up mirror gets updated, or a bug gets chased down, a'la-WhiteBox (no flames here, it's a guy doing the same thing with his own distro for his own use and sharing, and "stuff" happens)
i guess control-freak would be more accurate than picky.
besides, there's some sort of insidious thrill in getting all those Hundred Dollar updates for just the price of cpu cycles, and still having a walkin' talkin' RHEL4.
if you just fetch all the srpms, then drag-and-drop 'em onto the terminal, and put everything on one line with a load of "&&"'s between each command, hit enter on friday afternoon, and monday you just clean it up and go get coffee!
of course i imagine it's a lot faster if you didn't install "everything" .......=-)
- O.

Its okay if you prefer things that way and you have the time to do it. I build my own rpms for certain packages simply because I am impatient and don't like waiting long for official releases.:)