pirut (FC5 additional package installation help)

[Paul Howarth]

On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 10:12 +0200, Sjoerd Mullender wrote:
> Paul Howarth wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-04-13 at 09:45 +0200, Sjoerd Mullender wrote:
> > 
> >>Paul Howarth wrote:
> >>
> >>>On Wed, 2006-04-12 at 16:06 -0700, Kevin Grover wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>I installed FC5 (at work) from an NFS mount.  I picked the 'customize
> >>>>later' option on intial install rather than spend the time to select
> >>>>individual packages.  When I run 'Add/Remove Software' from the Gnome
> >>>>(metacity) WM, a GUI pops up, it thinks for a while and gives me an
> >>>>error:
> >>>>
> >>>>'unable to retrieve software information'
> >>>>
> >>>>[[Note much help there.  Reminds me of an old fortan compiler that
> >>>>simply said 'No' if the source file had any error.]]
> >>>>
> >>>>When I click OK the GUI closes (all windows go away), 
> >>>>
> >>>>After poking around, I figured out what program was running (pirut)
> >>>>and ran it from the command line.  Now I see an error there:
> >>>>
> >>>>'ERROR: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: core'
> >>>>
> >>>>I looked for help on pirut on the system
> >>>>the program has --help or -h option
> >>>>no man page
> >>>>no info page
> >>>>nothing found in included help (html)
> >>>>/usr/doc/pirut* was useless
> >>>>briefly looked at pirut python code, no help there
> >>>>
> >>>>Is there a way I can get pirut to look at the nfs mounted image for
> >>>>install packages instead of going over the net?  I can not possibly
> >>>>put this machine on an Internet connection.  I guess, I can just nuke
> >>>>everything and re-install and actually choose the options.  I almost
> >>>>wish I would have just left FC4 on the machine.
> >>>>
> >>>>I also tried yum, rpm, and system-install-packages but it seemd that I
> >>>>had to list a needed packages explicitly.  I tried for a while and
> >>>>gave up.  There must be an easier way.
> >>>>
> >>>>If there's some other program I can use, or if I can get rpm or yum to
> >>>>let me select packages.  I want to install the KDE stuff, some other
> >>>>WMs, and set XDMCP to be launchable from Applications (?? I think
> >>>>menu) on the login screen.  I know XDMCP is not secure, it does not
> >>>>matter: the network this will run on a physically secure.
> >>>>
> >>>>Everything worked fine (installing new software with pirut) on my home
> >>>>machine (which is connected to the Internet).
> >>>>
> >>>>Any help appreciated.
> >>>>
> >>>>[[FC5 seams to have so much documentation, but never anything I'm
> >>>>really lookiing for]]
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>All of the FC5 package management tools are based on yum.
> >>>
> >>>Yum is by default configured to get packages from the Internet.
> >>>
> >>>There is currently no support in yum or the other tools for reading
> >>>package information from CD or DVD media, though this is planned for the
> >>>future.
> >>
> >>Not entirely true.  You can get it to work.
> >>I have a copy of the DVD ISO on my system which is mounted through the
> >>loop-back mount (but it would work equally well for the extracted DVD).
> >> In some other directory I have a symlink to the Fedora subdirectory
> >>from the DVD.  In that (other) directory I ran the command
> >>	createrepo -g Fedora/base/comps.xml .
> >>This directory I can now use as a source for yum (and hence pirut,
> >>yumex, etc.).
> > 
> > 
> > Which is exactly what I suggest as my workaround below...
> 
> I didn't read that.  ;-)
> Sorry.
> 
> > 
> >>>This is all mentioned here:
> >>>http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/FC5Common
> >>>
> >>>On that page you will find a link to my workaound for this issue:
> >>>http://www.city-fan.org/tips/YumRepoFromImages
> > 
> > 
> > ... except that there is no need to run createrepo if you have the DVD
> > ISO because the metadata is already on the DVD.
> 
> For some reason, that didn't work for me.  I didn't investigate why.

It's working here with fedora-core.repo having:

baseurl=file:///srv/softlib/fedora/bordeaux/dvd

and an fstab entry of:

/srv/softlib/fedora/bordeaux/FC-5-i386-DVD.iso /srv/softlib/fedora/bordeaux/dvd iso9660 ro,loop,fscontext=system_u:object_r:public_content_t:s0 0 0

With this, I can also serve the repo over http and/or ftp for other
clients on the LAN.

Paul.