Fedora Core 3 Two Questions

[Toralf Lund]

Lee M Ward wrote:

>>On Fri, 2005-05-06 at 20:12 +0900, Lee M Ward wrote:
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>>>What's up? I just downloaded and installed FC3 and I'm loving it so far.
>>>Only two things I'm trying to figure out. First: Is there a any programs
>>>on here like GnoRPM so I can manage my installed programs a little
>>>better. 
>>>      
>>>
>>Most package management matters are easily resolved with yum or rpm.
>>Perhaps you can be more specific.
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>>Second: Why won't it let me install source RPMs? I tried a
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>>>couple and it keeps telling me I can't because of "system-config-
>>>packages." Is there any way around this? Thank you for your help.
>>>      
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>>Your command and error message?
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>"The file xxxxxx is a source RPM which cannot be installed with
>system-config-packages."
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Right. First of all: system-config-packages if of course precisely the 
GUI you were after. But I said that already.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to handle source RPMs. Not sure why. But: 
Are you sure you *want* to install them? Installing a source RPM 
basically means copying its spec file and *packaged* source (usually a 
.tar.gz file) to the hard disk; the process won't give you the source 
code in plain-file format or build anything. In most cases, you may just 
as well save the source rpm to disk instead, since unpacking or building 
directly from that is just as easy. Try "rpmbuild --rebuild <source rpm 
file>"...

>I finally figured out how to get the kernel sources installed,
>
How exactly did you do that? Note that the kernel-source package 
traditionally distributed with RH/FC, is a "binary" package containing 
source code files, which is not the same thing as a source rpm.

> but I'm just wondering why
>it won't install other sources to. This is mostly just a curiosity thing now, because I can
>always download tar files of sources. I got another thing real quick...sorry, but I got a couple
>programs that when I try to start them, they don't load. The "Starting xxx" comes on the bar, but
>it never loads. Is that an FC issue or the program issue. I will say, the first few times, the program
>did load w/o a problem, now it won't (I have uninstalled and reinstalled the program). Thanks for the help.
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What program?

This does sound like an issue with the program itself...

- Toralf