a couple of FC4 questions (LVM and apt vs. yum)

[dishawjp]

Hi All,

I finally got around to installing FC4 today. The install went great with all my hardware being correctly detected and most everything ran great "out of the box." But because of the posts on this list regarding the dag apt repositories being completed and seeing that freshrpms didn't have a version of apt posted for FC4 yet, Actually I didn't find a yum version for FC4 in either freshrpms or with dag either. So I did a "yum update" with the default FC4 repositories to get the security and bug fixes and to install a few other things like gkrellm and fortune and a few others. I wasn't able to get any of the totem plugins or even mplayer from the default repositories, so I can't play any movies of any kind yet with FC4.

My first questions about apt vs. yum are:

Are the apt repositories up to date and complete yet?

Since it looks like Fedora is working hard to get rid of apt and move to yum or a yum based apdater, does it still make sense to stick with apt?

Since I already did use yum to update, would switching to apt be a bad idea?

My other questions involve logical volume management. My computer is a dual boot FC3/FC4 with FC3 installed on hdc and FC4 on hdd. To copy my data files from hdc to hdd, I ended up having to burn them to CD since I wasn't able to mount one hard drive from the other. In the past, it was a simple "mount /dev/hdc /mnt" but now I get a message saying that either it is already ounted or that mnt is busy. I tried a "mount /dev/VolGroup00 /mnt" and got an error saying that /dev/VolGroup00 is not a block device or something similar. When booting, I get messages saying that VolGroup00 (my FC3 drive) and VolGroup01 (my FC4 drive) are being mounted. How do I access the data on those drives to move it between the two OS's?

Anyway, TIA for any pointers, suggestions or recommendations.

Jim

[Void Main]

I have never used yum and probably never will. I installed FC4 on the day it was released and used the Dag and FreshRPMS FC4 apt repositories that same day. The problems with FreshRPMS actually had nothing to do with FC4, it was a problem with the hosting service and those issues have been resolved for some time now. There was an issue with Dag's MPlayer dependencies but that wasn't anything difficult to get around. I can't imagine that problem still exists. Those kinds of things are usually cured as soon as they are known.

[dishawjp]

Voidmain,

Hmmm.... I guess I'm going to the wrong sites or something to get apt. I've been to:
http://apt.freshrpms.net/
and
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/apt/
and haven't found any apt versions for FC4 in either location. Nothing newer than FC3 versions. I just checked again, and still nothing for FC4 listed at either site.

Where did you get the FC4 apt versions?

Jim

[Tux]

http://dag.wieers.com/packages/apt/apt- ... f.i386.rpm

It's on the page you linked. Scan down the right hand column, it's the first entry listed 'RPM File'.

[dishawjp]

Thanks Tux!

I guess I should have been able to find it, but it could also have been made a bit more obvious for half blind old guys like me.

Thanks!

Jim

[dishawjp]

Hi All,

Well, I installed Dag's apt as suggested by VoidMain and as pointed out to me by Tux, gave yum the old "rpm -e" since if VoidMain hates it as much as he seems to, then I'll stay away from it like the plague.

So, now that I have a functional installer/updater, I decided to start installing a few programs I like to have, like j2re, mozilla-j2re, wth & etc. I got the following after trying to install the j2re stuff:

Code: Select all

[root@eunix etc]# apt-get install j2re mozilla-j2re
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package j2re has no available version, but exists in the database.
This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and
never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents
of sources.list
E: Package j2re has no installation candidate
[root@eunix etc]#


Does this just mean that Dag hasn't gotten around to packagine these rpms for FC4 yet, or have I managed to do something wrong?

The "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade -y" command went fine, and updated over 20 packages.

TIA,

Jim

[Void Main]

That is correct, but you know what? I had problems in FC3 with that version of JRE so I ended up just getting the new 1.5 jre from Sun:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp

Works good, last a long time.

[dishawjp]

I'm still having problems with apt. They are relatively minor, but I seem to be unable to install programs that I could easily before. BTW, I installed JRE your way and that worked perfectly.

When I first run apt I get the following error about newrpms not being found:

Code: Select all

[root@eunix ~]# apt-get update
Ign http://newrpms.sunsite.dk redhat/en/i386/fc4 release
Get:1 http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386 release [1836B]
Get:2 http://apt.sw.be fedora/4/en/i386 release [474B]
Get:3 http://apt.sw.be dries/fedora/fc4/i386 release [486B]
Fetched 2796B in 1s (2573B/s)
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/freshrpms pkglist
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/freshrpms release
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/core pkglist
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/core release
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/updates pkglist
Hit http://ayo.freshrpms.net fedora/linux/4/i386/updates release
Err http://newrpms.sunsite.dk redhat/en/i386/fc4/newrpms pkglist
  404 Not Found
Ign http://newrpms.sunsite.dk redhat/en/i386/fc4/newrpms release
Hit http://apt.sw.be fedora/4/en/i386/dag pkglist
Hit http://apt.sw.be fedora/4/en/i386/dag release
Hit http://apt.sw.be dries/fedora/fc4/i386/dries pkglist
Hit http://apt.sw.be dries/fedora/fc4/i386/dries release
Failed to fetch http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/apt/redhat/en/i386/fc4/base/pkglist.newrpms  404 Not Found
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
[root@eunix ~]#


Then installing (common?) programs like Synap[tic or Frozen Bubble, I get errors as follow:

Code: Select all

[root@eunix ~]# apt-get install synaptic
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  synaptic: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6.so.2 but it is not installable
E: Broken packages
[root@eunix ~]#


and

Code: Select all

[root@eunix ~]# apt-get install frozen-bubble
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  frozen-bubble: Depends: SDL_mixer (>= 1.2.2) but it is not installable
                 Depends: libSDL_mixer-1.2.so.0 but it is not installable
                 Depends: perl(SDL)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::App)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::Cursor)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::Event)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::Font)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::Mixer)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::SFont)
                 Depends: perl(SDL::Surface)
                 Depends: perl-SDL (>= 1.19.0) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages
[root@eunix ~]#


I downloaded and installed Dag's version of apt from from where Tux directed me and it appears to be the correct version.

Code: Select all

[root@eunix ~]# rpm -q apt
apt-0.5.15cnc6-4.2.fc4.rf
[root@eunix ~]#


As usual, I've either missed something or managed to screw something up. Any pointers?

TIA,

Jim

[Tux]

Alot of programs don't seem to have been moved to the FC4 repo's in any timely fashion. I'm finding lots of missing deps.

Currently, I'm just heading to FreshRPM's or DAG and downloading the FC3 or EL4 version of whatever is needed.

[dishawjp]

Thanks Tux,

That's good to hear. If it's just a matter of waiting for the repos to get populated, then I can either wait or begin installing FC3 versions. I was just worried, since I hadn't seen anybody else talking about similar problems, that I has messed something up.

Thanks again,

Jim

[Void Main]

I guess I never had any problems because I had upgraded from FC3 to FC4 and it just left the FC3 versions installed if there wasn't a version for FC4. I'm not sure if this would screw things up or not but I wonder if in addition to the FC4 repos you uncomment the FC3 repos in your *.list files. At least for the Dag and FreshRPMS repos (don't do this for "os" or "updates").

[dishawjp]

Voidmain,

I really don't want to mess my system up. It is stable even if I have a more limited software selection than I'd like. I still can't get the newrpms site to work, even though they now seem to have an FC4 repository set up. I tried editing my sources.list.d/newrpms file but must have done something wrong since it wouldn't access the new site. I reverted to the original file for now even though it still gives me a "404 not found" error.

Dag's repositories don't seem to have been updated since June 11th when he added apt for FC4 and updated a very few other packages for FC4. There doesn't seem tp be anything new there since then and without possibly doing damage to my system (something I'm pretty good at even without trying) there are a lot of packages that I can't install with apt. For example mplayer, SDL, and a lot of other pretty common things just won't install with apt.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestion, but for now I guess I'll either play the dependency hell game or hope that the repos get updated soon. People like Dag and the other repo maintainers do a huge amount of work for users like me. It's too bad that there isn't some small fee charged for Fedora or apt so that these people could be paid for all their efforts.

Jim

[Void Main]

The reason it doesn't work with apt is because there is no "base" directory containing the apt control files. Apparently they aren't ready for people to use it yet. Looking at [url=http://newrpms.atrpms.net/apt/redhat/en/i386/fc4/RPMS.newrpms/[/url]the packages in the repo[/url] I don't see anything there that looks interesting to me anyway and I don't think I ever actually used that repo even on my systems with older releases (FC3, FC2, etc). I don't know why Dag's apt repos are so behind. You might want to browse over the mailing list archive for chatter on what's going on:

http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/freshrpms-list/

[dishawjp]

Voidmain,

Thanks for the link to the freshrpms list. I also just found the following:

http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/index.p ... f_DAG_Repo

Just thought I'd post the link in case others were wondering what was going on.

Jim