[rhn-users] firefox and yum

Wed Dec 12 20:48:28 UTC 2007

On 12/12/2007, Paula J. Lindsay <paula at scripps.edu> wrote:
>
>  Thank you Mairin and Herta for you response.  Here is the result from my
> up2date -i firefox, this was the first
>  thing I tried:
>  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>  [paula at rocky paula]$ up2date -i firefox
>  Fetching Obsoletes list for channel: rhel-x86_64-ws-3...
>  Fetching rpm headers...
>  Name                                    Version        Rel
>
>  ----------------------------------------------------------
>  The following packages you requested were not found:
>  firefox
>  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>  This is why I wanted to use yum.  I don't understand
>  why "packages requested were not found."  I got
>  firefox from RHN, but it isn't an rpm.  It's a complete
>  directory.  In the directory I run ./firefox and get that
>  gtk error.  When I go to the console and run ./firefox,
>  it takes me to google....  I don't know why this is so hard.
>  One of my colleagues said "welcome to the linux world."
>  But I've been working with linux for over a year and
>  have never encountered this.
>  Many thanks for all of your help.
>  Paula
>
>
>
>  Máirín Duffy wrote:
>  Hi Paula,
>
> Paula J. Lindsay wrote:
>
>
>  Hi everyone, I hope you can help me with this silly problem. I'm
> working on a RHE 3 machine and I am trying to install yum
> so I can yum down firefox. Well, when I try to install yum (via rpm)
> there are too many dependencies/conflicts and the install
> fails.
>
>  Where are you getting the yum RPM for RHEL 3 from? Are you sure the RPM
> you are using was built for RHEL 3?
>
> RHEL 3's default and Red Hat supported package update system is a
> program called 'up2date'. Do you have a specific reason that you would
> like to use yum instead of up2date on RHEL 3?
>
>
>
>  I finally gave up and downloaded a firefox package and I can't
> install that either. I get this message:
>
> (firefox-bin:1120): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:
>
>  Where are you receiving this message? This doesn't seem to be a message
> that RPM, yum, or up2date would output. See, it says "firefox-bin" so it
> looks like an error message given by running firefox, which means
> firefox would have to have been successfully installed.
>
> How are you starting up firefox when you try to run it? My first guess
> would be that maybe you've ssh'ed into a machine that has firefox
> installed and you are typing 'firefox' at the prompt, but because you
> are ssh'ed in it can't display the firefox window on your remote
> machine. (If you are connecting from a remote Linux machine you can try
> ssh -Y <hostname goes here> and then running firefox remotely and it
> should pop up.)
>
>
>
>  I am getting so frustrated because these were such simple tasks and I am
> just spinning my wheels. Why is it so hard to install
> these two programs.
>
>  It appears you successfully installed firefox. Yum, I am not sure what
> the whole story is with that - why are trying to install it on a RHEL 3
> machine? Is the RPM you are using built for RHEL 3?
>
>
>
>  Why doesn't the rpm that I download already have
> the libs and python that is needed.
>
>  Necessarily, programs like firefox and yum rely on versions of libraries
> that are external to them. If every program contained the code for every
> other program and library it required, you would have many duplicate
> copies of the same set of libraries and programs installed on your
> machine, not only wasting your harddrive space but also leaving your
> machine vulnerable to security bugs as some programs' copies of a
> particular library may be very out-of-date.
>
> It is also important that the RPMs installed on your system are built
> for the version of RHEL that you are using. If you try to install a yum
> package that was built for RHEL 5 on a RHEL 3 machine, for example, it
> will likely never install because it will require versions of libraries
> and other packages that are not and likely will never be available in
> RHEL 3. One of the main differences between RHEL 3 and RHEL 5, for
> example, is the very package set and the manifest of package versions
> available in each.
>
> RPMs are not really meant to be installed by hand. We have package
> management programs such as yum and up2date in RHEL and apt in Debian in
> order to manage this 'dependency hell' for you. You should not have to
> resolve these dependencies by hand. The following video/article does
> talk a bit about this:
> http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/09/20/the-next-horizon-how-red-hat-used-yum-to-overcome-rpm-dependency-hell/
>
> If you would have installed firefox by running 'up2date -i firefox' you
> would not have had to deal with any of this, if your goal was to just
> install firefox.
>
>
>
>  I can't even
> google the problem because I always end up where I downloaded the
> program in the first place. Any help would be
> dearly appreciated. And, thanks in advance.
>
>  In the future you may have some luck with http://kbase.redhat.com/. Or
> of course you can feel free to ask here!
>
> Does this make any more sense now?
>
> ~m
>
>
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>
>
>  --
> Paula J. Lindsay
> IT Analyst III
> Research Computing
> 10550 North Torrey Pines Road
> La Jolla, CA 92037
> 858.784.9378 (office)
> 858.784.9301 (fax)
> paula at scripps.edu
>
>
I always install firefox from http://www.mozilla.com/ to make sure
I've got the latest and greatest (i.e. with security bugs corrected as
soon as Mozilla.org releases them).

Kind regards,

Herta