Outdated SuSe packages

Hi everyone, I was in the thread about updating FireFox in SuSe and was confused about why it would be so out of date! Suse 10.0 has this online update thing so I figure well OK, 1 package needs updated manually!

Well, it's worse then that! SuSe really is cool the way people describe it... There is an applications menu full of games and internet programs, but now I wonder if they are all out of date?

For the usenet, SuSe comes with PAN news reader and when you run it, there is a link to the home page which is announcing PAN v0.99... From the Help/About screen in PAN that comes with SuSe, it is v0.14 (c) 2003!

I don't want to sound like a complainer but come on!!! I downloaded this version of SuSe just earlier this year in 2006!

Is there an easier way to update this stuff from 2003 or do you just have to open every game and program on the system and check how old it is from Help/About?

Updating everything manually might be a good way to learn more about linux but since I'm a newbie, it might take me weeks to do it and then I might make a mistake and trash the system, loosing weeks of work!

Some packages will be old because their developers no longer maintain them or they are stable as they are and don't really need improving. Suse (like many distros) does not usually put new features into a distro after an official release. If you need the latest and greatest, you have to add the supplementary repositories to your YAST installation sources (ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary). The latest Firefox is available at ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/mozilla/firefox .

Thanks for the info reddazz! I knew suse had an ftp (most linux distro's do) but I never knew what was on it thanks to my router's firewall... It will not work with most ftp's!

Seems like ftp clients connect and then ask the server for a directory list which causes the it to attempt to connect back to the client on a random port and it fails to list the contents!

Yet the link was helfull because I used the path info to search for an http mirror! I found a ton of mirrors all with mostly empty folders! I think I finally found one mirror which actually has lots of Suse stuff and might be helpful... The applications folder of the gnome update folder in the suse10.0 folder was loaded!

http://mirror.vmmatrix.net/SUSE/i386/supplementary/

http://mirror.vmmatrix.net/SUSE/i386.../applications/

is that similar to what's on the suse ftp if I could manage an ftp connection?

I learned some more after posting that stuff above...

Turns out that the PAN newsreader for SuSe is current!!! Just because it's old don't mean it aint current! The v0.99 announcement is for Debian and Fedora. All other versions, including SuSe are current at v0.14.2!

Hmmmm... Next time I'll read more before complaining! At least I found a good http in the process! Thanks for your patience and help though!

I looked at the mirrors and they have similar content to whats on the Suse ftp server. You can also browse the main Suse ftp server by replacing the ftp protocol in the urls above and replacing them with http.

I tried that replacing the protocol thing and it did work!

http://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/

The next thing I hope to do is find away that an online directory can be added to yast2 as an install source because I moved recently and my SuSe CD's are in a box somewhere.... They describe the process here:

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/11504.html

I've tried different mirrors and folders but I get:

ERROR(InstSrc:E_no_instsrc_on_media)

So I switch to this other similar page:

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16592.html

I works if you put in the information exactly as shown so I looked at the site in the web browser to see why (maybe instsrc is a file) there was no "InstSrc" file seen on the server so I'm not sure why this one works and not others.

http://packman.iu-bremen.de/suse/10.0/

Thanks again for the help! Now I can install libs needed for another program I wanted to try!

For the KDE repository the installation source is as follows,

protocol: http
server name: software.opensuse.org
directory on server: download/KDE:/KDE3/SUSE_Linux_10.0

For GNOME

protocol: http
server name: ftp.suse.com
directory on server: pub/suse/i386/supplementary/GNOME/update_for_10.0/yast-source

There is a "Change installation Source" under software in yast modules. It really isn't that hard to figure out. After version 9.3, suse separated 10.0 and 10.1 into two different directories. The opensuse directory structure:

**http:// mirrors.kernel.org/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source**

is like that. All the suse mirrors have opensuse too. The actual Novell opensuse mirror is horrible. It would take two days to install off that. Here is a little secret.

whatevermirror/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/boot/boot.iso

is a bootable network install disk, which gives you all the software, not that scaled down mini cd from opensuse.org And, use some other mirror besides opensuse own server. That kernel.org is a good one.

And if you just want to install one package:

yast2 --install package

from a terminal