HI All,
I have installed a virtualbox on an windows Xp machine.In the virtual machine I have installed fedora as my guest OS.Now what I want is to install softwares in this guess OS.Can someone tell me or point to a step by step guide on how to go about doing this.Mainly what I need is to run my gcc compiler on this + some other software isntallations.Please can someone help?

Thanks,
Ajit

116 posts and you've never installed an RPM?

for gcc, you're best off running Note that your system being a VM is utterly irrelevant here.

You would install any software the same way as you would on a physical installation. You could either use package manager to install the softwares or rpm command. Both are valid and correct.
To install packages using yum, you would typically need internet connection to download and install the software. Except in the case where you have the rpm file and want to use yum to install the locally available rpm file.

Edit: Chris beat me here with speed on keyboard.

Chaitanaya and Chris,
I am not exactly sure how to I transfer the RPMs to the guest os.I dont know how to configure the interfaces for the guest OS.How to assign an IP address to the interface so that it starts talking to internet and my yum starts working.Can someone help me with this regards.

Thanks
Ajit

If you have installed CentOS in GUI mode and you have some DE installed, you should be able to use system-config-network command to configure your network settings. Please check the documentation for your virtualisation package on how to add interface to the guest OS.

I tried the above command but I am getting the following error.

[root@localhost tmp]# yum groupinstall "Developement Tools"
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again.

So how do I resolve this issue.

Ajit

fix the "fedora" repository as presumably defined in /etc/yum.repos.d/

I don't *think* that's a standard name at all, did you add that repo yourself?

I did spell the group name wrong though... "Development Tools"

And instead of relying on Chris for spelling the package names for you, you could use yum grouplist to list all the groups available for installation. Also, it would be nice to know which version of fedora are you using.

This is what I have tried so far and these are the results.

[root@localhost liveuser]# yum grouplist
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Group Process
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again
[root@localhost liveuser]# yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again
[root@localhost liveuser]# yum grouplist
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Group Process
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again
[root@localhost liveuser]# uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686 #1 SMP Mon May 9 20:43:14 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[root@localhost liveuser]#

Please let us know the distribution name and the version. As per the errors, there seems to be an issue with the repository configuration at your end. Or if you are using a very old version of Fedora, there is a chance that the repository is no more valid.

As I already said... you need to fix that "fedora" repo.

This is a problem with fedora 16 you can find the details here http://http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-277594.html.I have gone through the thread but I am still not able to know which files do I exactly edit and how so that my yum starts working.Can any one please help me here?

Thanks

well, that's a pretty generic error, and just seems that you have some form of network issue, which suggests you've probably not configured your virtual networking correctly... As in that thread, run

URLGRABBER_DEBUG=1 yum update

and see what it complains about then. Didn't know that trick, handy to know...

This is the output of the last 50 lines of the command

URLGRABBER_DEBUG=1 yum update

It seems that my proxy settings are not configured but I dont know where do I have to configure them and how?Is there something else I am missing?

If there is a proxy in your network you can configure the settings in /etc/yum.conf file