Red Hat Network & .rpm files
 

Help me please. I need to ugrade the RNH but I cannot seem to be able to. I find the directions on rhn.redhat.com unclear. I cannot open any .rpm files. When I do it says that it is perparing to update, and a bar moves. Then the box closes and nothing happeneds. The thing is no updated either. I am afraid of rpm -- they don't seemed to be working for me. I am Using Red Hat Linux 9

When you installed RH did you let it scan the CD? You might have a bad version...or some bits missing...I am on my second set and this one still has a few bugs..One thing I usually do is load all of RH..that cures a lot of problems.

everything works fine other than that when i click on a .rpm file, it does not install. It does a preinstall routine and then closes. I need to figure how to use and or fix Red Hat Package Manager.

When you update the RHN, there should have been 3 rpm's. Due to circular dependancies, they all need to be installed at the same time. I think the command is rpm -ivh up2date*.rpm. The * is a "wild card". This tells RH to install any and all rpm's starting with "up2date".
It's been a while since I did this but I found this on the RHN page. The README files say it all, even though sometimes you have to dig pretty deep.
:study:

I recently started using up2date with Red Hat 9 to install security patches and keep my system up to date. I am trying to remember what I had to do to set that up. First I signed up with the Red Hat Network for their free trial subscription of the Red Hat Network. That may or may not have been an essential step. After signing up I was then informed that some digital certificat that Red Hat uses had expired and that I would have to download a new copy of the certificate or the up2date program or something. It said I would not be able to use up2date until downloading what was needed to solve the expired digital certificate problem. Next, I clicked on icon for connecting to the Red Hat Network that was on the right side of my taskbar. I always get an error message the first time I click it. But when I click a second time it always works. Then I click on the button that says "Launch up2date."

I did not select to have every software package updated at once because I only connect at 26.4K (old phone lines in my neighborhood). I used up2date everyday until I finally had everything updated. I feel better knowing that various possible security holes have been patched. I also was surprised to discover that several annoying problems that my computer was having also got fixed. One example is that my clock now keeps the correct time in hours and days not just in minutes and seconds. Another improvement is that during boot-up it now correctly sees that my external serial modem is really still there. I am now more happy than ever with Red Hat 9 now that those slight problems are gone. I should have used up2date sooner!

Every few days when I happen to be online I click the button on the taskbar to launch up2date and see if any new patches are available. I am always dissapointed when there are not any new security patches to download. It is easy to do. I am not an expert at that kind of thing. Can I continue using up2date for free or do I eventually need to pay $5 per month to join the Red Hat Network?

P.S. I hope I did not misunderstand your quesion. The updates use RPM files but after downloading the files all I had to do was click on the button that installed the updates for me automatically. Of course I always have to wait for the file to finish downloading before I can click on that button. At 26.4K it can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour to download. If I had downloaded everything at once it would probably have taken a good portion of a day to download the over 100K of patches.

When I first updated Windows 2K I also had to download patches for many hours. Did I still misunderstand your question? I probably did, well it is getting late and I did not have time to read your question very carefully.

i did what you said by doing both up2date files in the same command line, and now i have up2date. However in the process of downloading things it has crashed four times. The demo subscription just started for me this is my second day on red hat. I figured out how to open .rpm files but i am a little dissapointed you cant do it through X windows like with .taz.gz files... I finally got the files downloading after it crashing so much, but i cant install them because up2date is constantly freezing...

When I updated up2date, there were 3 rpm's. Are you sure you got them all?
What do you mean by crashing? If you have a dial up, it may take a while to download everything or to connect to RHN, and you may get disconnected and that would odviously cause problems.
Other than that, you got me
good luck

No I got up2date working. It downloaded all of the files (I don't dial up I have broadband and it went at 356 kpbs) but when i try to open up2date to install the files up2date freezes and i have to do kill ap