Yum

[Stuart]

> How do i tell if the fedora-release package is installed? is that the
> gui for add/remove programs. If it is when i try and look at that i get
> "unable to retrieve software information. This may be cause by not
> having a network connection" i am connected to a network though?

No worries, we all start somewhere :-)

File and directory structures are (I'm doing this by memory, so some
path names might not be exactly correct :-)

/var/cache/yum/   <--- YUM base directory say, so we'll put:

$base_dir = /var/cache/yum

hence:

/var/cache/yum/updates-released == $base_dir/updates-released (where
== means 'same as')

so:

/var/cache/yum/updates-released/[temporary files, recognised by _some_
files having .XML extensions]
/var/cache/yum/updates-released/headers/[header files, recognised by
_all_ files having .HDR extensions]
/var/cache/yum/updates-released/packages/[RPM install files,
recognised by _all_ files having .RPM extensions]

This applies to other repositories (as described by files found in
/etc/yum.repos.d/[repo files with  .REPO extension]), such as Base
(fedora.repo), Extras (fedora-extras.repo) etc. Any of these
directories may or may not be found in your $base_dir above, because
they only get created when YUM (or Yumex for that matter) polls the
repo servers to update/install software.

If you are able to run in graphical mode, maybe Yumex would be more
illustrative/graphical. Although you'd need to yum that in from the
Extras repository. Hmmm...

Anyways, do you plan to keep the RPMs after you've updated/installed?
If so, 'yum clean all' will wipe out all temporary files, headers and
RPMs that you've downloaded, which are all considered as cached files.
I normally just manually bomb the temporary files found in:

/var/cache/yum/updates-released/[temporary files, recognised by some
files having .XML extensions]

but keep all .HDR and .RPM files in their respective directories.

Also note that Yumex defaults to wiping out your cached files on
update/install, so go in... configure not to clear cache... exit, and
re-enter Yumex if you want to keep your .RPMs

And ask as many questions as you want :-)

HTH

Stu@