Nov 13 2004
Updating Fedora Core
Getting started with fedora.us
This page is for those that want to use the installation and package management features of fedora.us. Those that need information about configuring and using an installed Fedora system should refer to UsingFedora.
Warning: fedora.us packages are designed and tested to work smoothly with only Red Hat Linux, Fedora Core and other fedora.us packages. Please read RepositoryMixingProblems to understand the compatibility problems of mixing repositories.
First read FedoraChannels for an explanation of the different software channels available at fedora.us.
In order to install packages from fedora.us, you could manually download and install packages from the fedora tree, but in the long term it is a lot easier to learn how to use one of the automatic package management programs. fedora.us supports two package managers, apt and yum. Both package managers handle automatic downloading and installation of packages that you specify, and are preconfigured to use the stable Fedora repositories.
Using apt with fedora.us
To use apt with fedora.us you should download one of our apt packages:
Fedora Core 3 need info here
Fedora Core 2 Download apt-0.5.15cnc6-0.fdr.11.2.i386.rpm
Fedora Core 1 Download apt-0.5.15cnc6-0.fdr.11.1.i386.rpm
Red Hat Linux 9 Download apt-0.5.5cnc6-0.fdr.8.rh90.i386.rpm
Red Hat Linux 8.0 Download apt-0.5.5cnc6-0.fdr.8.rh80.i386.rpm (requires rpm >= 4.1.1)
If you already have apt installed from a different repository project, you are encouraged to re-install apt using our enhanced packages.
On Fedora Core 1 and above you should use apt-get mirror-select to choose the best mirror for your location. For older releases, you should edit the configuration file /etc/apt/sources.list as detailed in Fedora Sources.
Overview of apt commands
apt-get update
Download package lists. Packages change several times daily, so do this often.
apt-get dist-upgrade
Update all packages.
apt-get install
apt-get mirror-select
Choose repositories and mirrors for use with apt (fedora.us specific extension).
apt-cache search
Search all known packages entries (descriptions etc) for word.
apt-cache show
See man apt-get and man apt-cache for more details.
Synaptic
apt users have an optional GUI frontend called Synaptic. After installing and configuring apt, you may install synaptic by issuing the command apt-get install synaptic.
Using yum with fedora.us
To use yum with fedora.us you must have yum installed. On Fedora Core yum is included in the distribution; for Red Hat Linux you should download and install one of our yum packages:
Red Hat Linux 9 Download yum-2.0.3-0.fdr.1.rh90.noarch.rpm
Red Hat Linux 8.0 Download yum-2.0.3-0.fdr.1.rh80.noarch.rpm (requires rpm >= 4.1.1)
Now you should edit the configuration file /etc/yum.conf as detailed in Fedora Sources.
yum is capable of automatic failover, so yum should keep working even if some of the download servers is temporarily unavailable. You should order the various URLs in the baseurl parameters of /etc/yum.conf so that nearby mirrors will be tried before your failover mirrors.
Overview of yum commands
yum list
List all available packages.
yum check-update or yum list updates
See if there are updated packages available.
yum update
Update all installed packages that have a newer version available.
yum install
yum search
Search all known packages entries (descriptions etc) for word.
yum info
All of the above commands can take shell-style wildcards (*,?) instead of a package name. Check the yum man page for more details.
Using up2date with fedora.us
The up2date versions distributed with Fedora Core have the ability to use yum and apt repositories. This means that up2date can be used to download and install fedora.us packages simply by adding the appropriate channels to the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources as described in Fedora Sources.