I have installed a few applications from tarballs on my Suse 9.2 pro box. Problem - Yast, kpackage and synaptic do not find these applications for upgrades. I tried using rpmbuilder but found it easier to install with make - make install than attempting to provide all the information required by rpmbuilder. I run a weekly update, normally with Yast Online Update, but the only packages found are those installed using rpm packages.

Second problem - there are a few applications I have installed on a Mepis box using kpackage for which I have been unable to find rpms that I want to install on my Suse box. Trouble is that kpackage, apt-get install and synaptic come back with package not found messages.

Any suggestions would be most appreciated. I have nearly reached the point of pulling my hair (what little of it there is) out.

Thanks in advance,

Grizzly

RPM does not recognise packages installed from source. You may want to take a look at a tool called checkinstall which can automate the creation of rpms. Once checkinstall has created your rpm and you install it, yast software management tool will recognise it and you can remove or upgrade it using this tool.

Another tool that can change from debian packages to rpm is alien. So you can try and change those packages you have on Mepis to rpms for Suse. I don't know if all the packages you convert will work though.