Recipe 2.13. Installing Yum

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Recipe 2.13. Installing Yum

2.13.1 Problem

You're rather tired of getting sucked into RPM-dependency hell, and you're ready to let the computer do the work.

2.13.2 Solution

Use Yum, the Yellow Dog Updater, Modified.

Yum is standard on Fedora; on other systems you may need to install it:

# rpm -ivh yum-2.0.4-1.noarch.rpm

Next, download the appropriate GPG keys. This key is for downloads from the Fedora project:

# rpm —import http://www.fedora.us/FEDORA-GPG-KEY

You'll find more keys in the download directories, such as http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os/. You'll need keys from all the repositories you configure Yum to use. Add this line to /etc/yum.conf to make Yum automatically check the keys:

gpgcheck=1

Now you can install a new program:

# yum install tuxpaint

Your first Yum download will take as long as 30 minutes, because it will download package lists:

Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)

Server: Fedora Linux / stable for Red Hat Linux 9 (i386)

Server: Red Hat Linux 9 (i386)

Server: Red Hat Linux 9 (i386) updates

Finding updated packages

Downloading needed headers

getting /var/cache/yum/fedora-stable/headers/leafnode-0-1.9.43-0.fdr.1.rh90.i386.hdr

getting /var/cache/yum/fedora-stable/headers/libzvt-devel-0-2.0.1-0.fdr.5.rh90.i386.hdr

...

Dependencies resolved

I will do the following:

[install: tuxpaint-2002.10.20-1.i386.rpm]

Is this ok [y/N]:

Say yes, and you're finished.

2.13.3 Discussion

FreshRPMs is a good source of quality packages. Yum mirrors are at http://ayo.freshrpms.net. Your Yum RPM from FreshRPMs will already be configured to use the FreshRPMs repositories. Be sure to install the GPG key:

# rpm —import http://freshrpms.net/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.txt

Putting gpgcheck=1 in yum.conf, and importing the keys, ensures that Yum will automatically check package signatures. It's an easy, painless method for checking that you are installing packages that have not been maliciously altered or messed up in transit.

2.13.4 See Also

yum(8), yum.conf(5)
Yum home page (http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/)
Yum mirrors at FreshRPMs (http://ayo.freshrpms.net)

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