RE: [school-discuss] Help on packaging / configuration guides

[Jeff Waddell <jwaddell@chi.spunge.org>]

Hello Steve and Michael,

Just a quick warning on yum and rpm in general.  Having just helped
someone with a nasty little problem that takes a bit of research to
figure out.  If you control-c (or kill -9) the yum (it's a perl script)
or apparently rpm for that matter during an install (something I routine did with
apt-get with debian), rpm will leave a semaphore file out there in it's
/var/lib/rpm/something or other (I don't have a fedora or redhat box
handy) and you will have to go delete it before you can get rpm or fedora
to work again.  This may be old hat to many of you, however, it was news
to the person I was helping (a very savvy sys admin with alot on his mind
besides tracking down silly semaphore files).  The main kicker to this
story is that NEITHER yum nor rpm gave any indication as to the problem...
they just hung.

I'd really like some fedora/redhat people to try this out on their systems
as it's certainly possible it was ONLY his fedora that is affected by
this, although somehow I doubt this....

Sincerely,

Jeff Waddell
jwaddell@spunge.org


On Sun, 29 Feb 2004, Michael Thompson wrote:

> Steve Kehoe,
> Have you looked into Yum? Yum is an automatic updater and package
> installer/remover for rpm systems. It automatically computes dependencies
> and figures out what things should occur to install packages. It makes it
> easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each
> one using rpm. It was originally for Yellow Dog Linux but has been modified
> and released for Fedora, etc. You can get it at
> http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum
> Hope this helps.
>
> Michael Thompson
> President/Founder
> CodedFuture
> mthompson@codedfuture.com
> http://www.codedfuture.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
> [mailto:owner-schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net] On Behalf Of Steve Kehoe
> Sent: Friday, February 27, 2004 5:53 PM
> To: schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
> Subject: [school-discuss] Help on packaging / configuration guides
>
> Can anyone help me out by pointing me to an
> introductary Howto / on-line manual on Linux package
> management and configuration. I'm looking for advice
> on how to automate or simplify as far as possible
> software installation and update procedures for Linux
> for both desktops and servers
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
> your friends today! Download Messenger Now
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html
>
>