YAST error message
 

I downloaded three .rpm's (smart, smart-addons, and smart-gui) to my home directory. Using konqueror I clicked on each of the files and chose the "Install package with YaST" option. Two of the files were installed, but the smart-addons file produced the error message "Following packages haven't been found on the medium : smart-addons".

Could someone explain exactly what this means? They are all in the same directory and have the same permissions.

Thanks.

If you are having problems installing local packages, just use the rpm command to do it yourself e.g. rpm -Uvh somefile.rpm. YAST does not always play along nicely with some local rpms.

Yast is garbage. The best way to install rpms is:
1) Using konqueror navigate to the folder where there are the rpms.
2) Go to the Tools menu and click Open Terminal (Note that this may not work if you use KDE 3.4.x and you navigate through the media:/ protocol. Either use the file:/ protocol or upgrade to kde 3.5.3)
3) In the terminal that appears, write: where package1.rpm and package2.rpm are the rpms you want to install. If you want to install all the rpms in a directory, do: Note that rpm does not resolve dependencies so you have to do this job manually.

Thanks for the advice.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that YaST kept a database of installed software so that I could cleanly remove what I did not want to keep. Does rpm keep a similar database, and if so where does it reside?

In fact rpm keeps a database and yast just uses the rpm database. You can remove any package with
and see a list with all packages with
You can also see if a package is installed and which version, with
To see details about an installed package, you can use
To see details about an rpm file, use
I could tell you a ton of other command line parameters for rpm but I think you can learn them yourself by using and

Many thanks. You have opened a new door for me. YaST was good but this is even better. I'm going to be studying the man page carefully.