Hi,
I am new to linux and have installed fedora 8 on a stand-alone machine. The computer is not connected to the internet and fedora was initially installed from a DVD.

When trying to install software packages though the "Add/remove Software" link, it opens a window saying "retrieving software information". Following that, it shows an error message - Unable to retrieve software information. This could be caused by not having a network connection available. On cliking on detail- it shows:
Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again

Dos this mean that this application cannot be used on computers not connected to the internet? Is there a workaround which can be used to get the application to work?

How can this application be used to install software packages from the hard disc of the computer?

Any help will be appreciated
Thanks

Hello anuprch

Fedora used to be set up as you describe where it was an internet distribution and after install it expected you to have a working internet connection to install further software.

That has changed in Fedora 8 though assuming that you used the DVD to install from.

If you did, then if you look in the folder:

/etc/yum.repos.d

you will see a file there called:

Fedora-install-media.repo

If you open that in a text editor with root priveliges you should see a line:

enabled = 0

if you change the 0 to a 1 you should be able to install further programs from the DVD.

I've not actually tried the process, but it may be necessary to open the fedora.repo and fedora-updates.repo which are usually enabled and disable them by changing their 1's to 0's in enabled, otherwise they will probably cause the process to fail once more.

That won't work though for anyone who installed from one of the live cd's. They transfer the whole of their contents to the hard disk on install and there is nothing extra left to add later.

Thanks a lot bbfuller!
I opened fedora.repo and changed the enabled = 1 to 0, and now it does not try and connect to the internet but asks to put in the CD. All the other repo files were already "enabled = 0"
So does this mean you can only install applications already on the fedora 8 DVD? I would like to install other software which are available online as .tar files, which I transfer to the computer through a thumb drive. However, the application does not give an option to browse the computer hard disc for available packages and only shows available packages on the DVD. Can this be sorted out, or do I need to install the .tar files differently?

Thanks for the help-really appreciate it

Hello anuprch

Pleased that worked.

As I said in my first post, Fedora, and indeed most distributions these days are built on the assumption of Internet Access. You can usually install software other ways but unless you are lucky it rapidly becomes such a nightmare that getting internet access is seen as a small price to pay.

However you can get software in other ways, the first problem is that some software - ndiswrapper is just one example - is packaged by the fedora maintainers in a way that is slightly different to the way you would be able to install it easily for yourself and so you may just find that using the methods below will still give you a non-functioning install.

Some but not all packages when you install them yourself will not put icons in the start menu for example and you have to add those manually.

The main other methods of getting software are:

download rpm's manually from the fedora and associated repositories. When you have you should be able to right click on them and select "open with" and "Software Installer". The problems are that packages are often not stand alone and as soon as you try to install demand some other package, so you get that, and find you need a third......... This is called "dependency hell", each package depending on another. This is automatically dealt with when you install such packages from the internet.

download other rpm's. The Opera browser is available as a stand alone rpm which is dealt with as above, but as it is stand alone there are no dependencies to worry about.

bin files. Google Earth for example can come as a bin file and for that there is generally a command to issue to install it.

tar and tar.gz files are just compressed files as is a zip file in Windows. Those you would usually right click on and select "Extract Here". There would usually be a readme file included in the extracted archive detailing what to do next. It's usually something like ./configure, ./make. and ./install issued as three separate commands but I wouldn't want to try without reading the readme.

I'm lucky enough to have an internet connection and so don't have to worry.

I can't guarantee to be able to help, but if you have trouble with a specific example post back and we'll see what we can work out.

Hi bbfuller,
Thanks a lot for all the information. Will post back if I get stuck with specific issues.
Really appreciate the help.
Thanks