Can't add or remove packages in FC4

[Mike McCarty]

BRUCE STANLEY wrote:

>--- Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Dave Gutteridge wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I'm running FC 4 with the latest kernel.
>>>My desire was to have the ability to input
>>>      
>>>
>>Japanese, but before I can 
>>    
>>
>>>even get to that, I have a more fundamental
>>>      
>>>
>>problem. When I went to 
>>    
>>
>>>Desktp | System Settings | Add/Remove Packages to
>>>      
>>>
>>install multilingual 
>>    
>>
>>>support, and selected the languages that I wanted
>>>      
>>>
>>to isntall, it said I 
>>    
>>
>>>had to install iiimf drivers first. I went on to
>>>      
>>>
>>the web to see if I 
>>    
>>
>>>could download these drivers, but despite finding
>>>      
>>>
>>information about them 
>>    
>>
>>>on Red Hat's site for Fedora, it wasn't as simple
>>>      
>>>
>>as finding an RPM and 
>>    
>>
>>>downloading it.
>>>
>>>In any case, I later decided that I wanted to
>>>      
>>>
>>remove some programs that 
>>    
>>
>>>might be causing problems with my DVD (which is
>>>      
>>>
>>another issue). But when 
>>    
>>
>>>I selected to remove certain applications (like
>>>      
>>>
>>Totem), again the 
>>    
>>
>>>Add/Remove Packages interface told me I had to
>>>      
>>>
>>have certain packages 
>>    
>>
>>>installed before it could do anything.
>>>Huh? Why do I need packages to *remove* things.
>>>
>>>After a little more experimentation, it seems that
>>>      
>>>
>>I can neither add nor 
>>    
>>
>>>remove *anything*. It always gives me a list of
>>>      
>>>
>>packages that I need to  
>>    
>>
>>>have available before it will update.
>>>
>>>The result is that I can not make any changes to
>>>      
>>>
>>my system. What can be 
>>    
>>
>>>done about this?
>>>      
>>>
>>Sounds like system-config-packages may be as broken
>>in FC4 as it was in FC3.
>>
>>Try using yum instead. If you really want a GUI, try
>>"yum install yumex" 
>>(yumex is in Extras) and you should then be able to
>>install and remove 
>>packages using yumex. Another GUI for yum is called
>>kyum, also in Extras.
>>
>>Paul.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I don't know if this is related or not but I had
>a weird problem with rpm last night.
>
>I installed the  gnuchess program from the Fedora
>Extras and this is what happen:
>
>      rpm -iv  gnuchess-*
>
>      Everyting installed without errors.
>
>      Tried to run program unde  KDE & Gnome
>      to no avail.
>
>      Went to remove the pacakage via 
>            rpm -ev gnuchess-*  
>
>         it told me that the package was not
>installed.
>
>      Ran another   rpm -iv ...  and rpm told me that
>      the package was already installed.
>
>      Huh?
>
>      Ran   rpm  --rebuilddb
>
>      The rpm system still things that the package
>      in not installed ( -e )  and installed ( -i )
>      at the same time.
>
>I wound up doing a  rpm -qpl gnuchess-*  and removed
>the files/dirs myself by hand ....  :-(  
>
>
>
>  
>
I can explain that behavior, having just gone through it
myself. One uses rpm to install and manage packages, not
files. When installing a package, one tells rpm what
file contains the package(s). The name of the file can
be *anything*. You can rename the file to whatever you
want. But the package(s) it contains remain the same.

The rpm keeps information on the packages it has installed
in a database. It is the name of the package in the data-
base which you need to use. Normally, just cut the ".rpm"
off the end of the file, and you get the package name.

When you used "rpm -qpl gnuchess-*" you asked it to remove
a package with a name ending in ".rpm" due to shell
globbing.

Mike

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