[rhn-users] Basic installation question

[Buchan Milne]

On Monday 06 March 2006 01:39, Mansour, Michael wrote:
> Hi,
>
> There's a nice program called "checkinstall" available in RPM, which will
> help you create an RPM from sources.

Be aware that it only allows you to take advantage of *some* RPM features, you 
don't get:

1)tracking of configure calls etc, patches applied, buildrequires, or any 
other information required to get the software to build to specification.

2)file type tracking, so config files may not be marked as such, and they will 
most likely be clobbered on upgrade.

3)No post-install scripts which may be necessary to get the software to a 
workable state after installation (maybe checkinstall handles libraries - ie 
running ldconfig - now, but it didn't last time I looked at it).

This is how we handle software on our RH systems:

1)Try and source a SRPM for the software from a compatible distribution. Since 
I am a contributor to Mandriva (bgmilne at mandriva.org), I normally prefer a 
SRPM from Mandriva (as I am guaranteed CVS and bugzilla on the package, as 
well as having access to make any changes I require), using some 
compatibility macros (http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/BackPorting)

If no suitable SRPM is found, write one from scratch, and contribute it to 
Mandriva if applicable.

2)Build the SRPM in a chroot on our build server

3)Upload the package to our internal package repository (using rpmupload from 
the Youri project - http://youri.zarb.org), which commits the SRPM to our 
internal CVS, and generates package meta-data

4)Use up2date (or smart) to install the package on the relevant hosts (after 
configuring up2date to use our internal yum repo 
in /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources).

Why do I include all this information? Well, it may take about 10 minutes more 
to build a package from scratch, but the time we save deploying the package 
onto all servers (and on new servers during kickstart), and having revision 
control on all packages is more than worth the time spent.

I personally don't use checkinstall, and I would really only advocate using it 
for generating a %files list (which you really need to edit manually).

Take the time to learn RPM ...

Regards,
Buchan

-- 
Buchan Milne
ISP Systems Specialist
B.Eng,RHCE(803004789010797),LPIC-2(LPI000074592)
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