Yum $releasever $basearch

[Paul Howarth]

On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 13:18 +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 13:15 +0100, John Austin wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 21:54 +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 12:38 -0700, MJang wrote:
> > > > Folks, 
> > > > 
> > > > Just wondering where the $releasever and $basearch variables are set
> > > > (these variables are found in the files in the /etc/yum.repos.d
> > > > directory. 
> > > > 
> > > > I understand what they are, that $releasever is the release version
> > > > (i.e. 3 or 4 for Fedora Core 3 or 4), and $basearch is the architecture
> > > > such as i386 or x86_64, but just can't figure out where these variables
> > > > are set.
> > > 
> > > Yum just expands these strings to the appropriate values as and when it
> > > encounters them.
> > > 
> > > It derives the $releasever value from the version number of the package
> > > configured as "distroverpkg" (actually, whatever "provides" that in RPM
> > > parlance) in /etc/yum.conf, and $basearch from a call to the operating
> > > system's uname(2) function.
> > > 
> > > Paul.
> > > -- 
> > > Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>
> > > 
> > Hi,
> > Along the same lines:
> > Is it therefore impossible to force yum to use different
> > release and basearch without editing the .repro files ?
> > 
> > Eg On an x86-64 FC install
> > Remove firefox-64 as the plugins aren't there and install firefox-i386
> > using yum (and hence jre-i386 with plugins)
> > Doing this by hand seems painful !!
> > 
> > Is there a better way ?
> 
> Not having an x86_64 box, I can't try this myself, but try putting:
> 
> exclude=firefox.x86_64
> 
> in your /etc/yum.conf 

This is to stop it getting reinstalled btw.; if you already have it
installed, you can remove it using:

# yum remove firefox.x86_64

A plain "yum install firefox" should then pick up the i386 version
because the x86_64 version is excluded. That's the theory anyway :-)

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>