Yum $releasever $basearch

[John Austin]

On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 13:34 +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 13:18 +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-05-24 at 13:15 +0100, John Austin wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 21:54 +0100, Paul Howarth wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 12:38 -0700, MJang wrote:
> > > > > Folks, 
> > > > > 
> > > > > Just wondering where the $releasever and $basearch variables are set
> > > > > (these variables are found in the files in the /etc/yum.repos.d
> > > > > directory. 
> > > > > 
> > > > > I understand what they are, that $releasever is the release version
> > > > > (i.e. 3 or 4 for Fedora Core 3 or 4), and $basearch is the architecture
> > > > > such as i386 or x86_64, but just can't figure out where these variables
> > > > > are set.
> > > > 
> > > > Yum just expands these strings to the appropriate values as and when it
> > > > encounters them.
> > > > 
> > > > It derives the $releasever value from the version number of the package
> > > > configured as "distroverpkg" (actually, whatever "provides" that in RPM
> > > > parlance) in /etc/yum.conf, and $basearch from a call to the operating
> > > > system's uname(2) function.
> > > > 
> > > > Paul.
> > > > -- 
> > > > Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>
> > > > 
> > > Hi,
> > > Along the same lines:
> > > Is it therefore impossible to force yum to use different
> > > release and basearch without editing the .repro files ?
> > > 
> > > Eg On an x86-64 FC install
> > > Remove firefox-64 as the plugins aren't there and install firefox-i386
> > > using yum (and hence jre-i386 with plugins)
> > > Doing this by hand seems painful !!
> > > 
> > > Is there a better way ?
> > 
> > Not having an x86_64 box, I can't try this myself, but try putting:
> > 
> > exclude=firefox.x86_64
> > 
> > in your /etc/yum.conf 
> 
> This is to stop it getting reinstalled btw.; if you already have it
> installed, you can remove it using:
> 
> # yum remove firefox.x86_64
> 
> A plain "yum install firefox" should then pick up the i386 version
> because the x86_64 version is excluded. That's the theory anyway :-)
> 
> Paul.
> -- 
> Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>
> 
Paul
I confess I am not sure if what I am trying to do is sensible !!!!
Two problems really
1. Installing to the "wrong" basearch (x86-64 versions not available)
2. Installing to the "wrong" releasever (yum repo not available for the
releasever yet)

I have a Athlon64 machine with FCT3 x86-64 installed.
Although my first email was wrt firefox and yum
I have now installed firefox-i386 (tar) and
jre-i386 (rpm-bin) by hand. Working OK
(I have not tried your suggestion yet !!!!)

The general question is whether it is possible/sensible
to try to use yum to install such things on test releases such as
FC4T3 ??
ie Use things like dag's FC3 i386 repo on a
FC4T3 x86-64 built machine.

I can force i386 and 3 in the dag.repo say
baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/os

but not for mirrors as the $basearch variable does not appear
it must be passed some other way as the $ARCH variable appears in the
mirror list
mirrorlist=http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors/fedora-core-
$releasever

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/$ARCH/os/

Any advice gratefully received

John