[ILUG] Re: yum and apt gurus, please read

[Joseph Kiniry]

Hi,

On 1 May, 2005, at 12:21, kevin lyda wrote:

> On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 11:57:18AM +0100, Joseph Kiniry wrote:
>> We use FC3 on several machines.  I have had no problems like those you
>> mention.  Our first step after installation is to point at the Irish
>> yum mirrors and type "sudo yum update".
>
> [begin rant]
>
> not to single this response out, but could yum, apt and other users of
> such tools quit giving half answers like this?  "point it at the irish
> yum mirrors" is not useful.  i've seen other answers like "put sid in
> your sources.list" or "add dag to your yum/apt config."
>
> if you're going to take the trouble to give an answer could you please
> include your /etc/yum.conf or your /whatever/sources.list?  is that too
> difficult to ask?

I (a) simply didn't want to attached six files to the post because  
other folks would complain about that, and (b) have found over the  
years that if you hand folks the answer on a platter they do not  
actually *learn*.  (Witness the spoon-feeding that goes on here in  
Ireland at the secondary level.)

Is it too much to ask people to read the docs and learn a tiny bit?

The mirrors are listed here:
   http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html
Some of the Irish mirrors end with '.ie'.  Should I explain that too?

Here is an example /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo:

[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/ 
$basearch/os/
          
ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/
         http://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/os/
         ftp://ftp.esat.net/pub/linux/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/os/
mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/fedora-core- 
$releasever
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1

You should modify the other files in that directory as appropriate as  
well.

> if you edit your email with vi it's as easy as
>
>     <esc>:r /etc/yum.conf<return>

I do not stoop to using vi for email, thanks.

> the goal of yum and apt is to make things easier.  half-answers don't
> help that.
>
> [end rant]

<end counter-rant/>