[ale] SUSE package manager and install empathy

[Geoffrey Myers]

James Sumners wrote:
> Five of the servers I administer at Clayton State are running RHEL4.
> Let's switch to talking about just the basic tools surrounding the
> package types and look at a simple example. For this example let's try
> to get some basic information about a package without having to do a
> bunch of research into the tools. That is we want to "query" a
> package.

Maybe you should learn how to use the tools?

rpm -qi screen

Name        : screen                       Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 4.0.3                             Vendor: CentOS
Release     : 1.el5_4.1                     Build Date: Thu 03 Dec 2009 
05:50:51 AM EST
Install Date: Tue 15 Feb 2011 09:38:20 AM EST      Build Host: 
builder10.centos.org
Group       : Applications/System           Source RPM: 
screen-4.0.3-1.el5_4.1.src.rpm
Size        : 772081                           License: GPL2
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Thu 17 Dec 2009 07:42:46 AM EST, Key ID 
a8a447dce8562897
URL         : http://www.gnu.org/software/screen
Summary     : A screen manager that supports multiple logins on one 
terminal.
Description :
The screen utility allows you to have multiple logins on just one
terminal. Screen is useful for users who telnet into a machine or are
connected via a dumb terminal, but want to use more than just one
login.

Install the screen package if you need a screen manager that can
support multiple logins on one terminal.




> 
> As you can see from the example below, rpm returns just about no
> useful information and apt actually tells you something. I have no
> idea what information is available in the RPM package that rpm could
> return. It seems to me that you have to _know how to build_ an RPM
> before you can get rpm to tell you anything useful. On the other had,
> apt just prints out its control file[1]. You, the user, don't _need_
> to know what a control file is, but you get the benefit of it being a
> requirement of the package format.
> 
> So there's a concrete example, that is current as of this morning, as
> to why I prefer one format to the other.
> 
> (N.B. Am I the only that is missing emails from this thread? I have
> not received the email from Chuck that Geoffrey replied to and I am
> now replying to.)
> 
> 
> [1] -- http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Debian-Binary-Package-Building-HOWTO/#AEN92
> 
> ==== Example ====
> RHEL4:
> $ rpm -q screen
> screen-4.0.2-5
> 
> Debian 6.0:
> $ apt-cache show screen
> Package: screen
> Priority: optional
> Section: misc
> Installed-Size: 984
> Maintainer: Jan Christoph Nordholz <hesso at pool.math.tu-berlin.de>
> Architecture: i386
> Version: 4.0.3-14
> Depends: libc6 (>= 2.1), libncursesw5 (>= 5.6+20071006-3), libpam0g
> (>= 0.99.7.1), dpkg (>= 1.15.4) | install-info
> Filename: pool/main/s/screen/screen_4.0.3-14_i386.deb
> Size: 604930
> MD5sum: 4f2fe23c048e10f7592ab4be48fc9f12
> SHA1: b77be652725e1e93f22b2918c1b04ec517427b20
> SHA256: 6fbfe0e399c521fb433fdb4e8357927527c5dd392e3841f1441ea3ea6f0c7802
> Description: terminal multiplexor with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation
>  screen is a terminal multiplexor that runs several separate "screens" on a
>  single physical character-based terminal.  Each virtual terminal emulates a
>  DEC VT100 plus several ANSI X3.64 and ISO 2022 functions.  Screen sessions
>  can be detached and resumed later on a different terminal.
>  .
>  Screen also supports a whole slew of other features.  Some of these are:
>  configurable input and output translation, serial port support, configurable
>  logging, multi-user support, and utf8 charset support.
> Homepage: http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/screen
> Tag: hardware::input:keyboard, implemented-in::c,
> interface::text-mode, role::program, scope::utility,
> uitoolkit::ncurses, works-with::software:running
> 
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Geoffrey Myers
> <lists at serioustechnology.com> wrote:
>> Chuck Payne wrote:
>>> Seriously Red Hat 6.0. Dude, that was 10 years ago, if RPM suck,
>>> Enterprise Companies would use it. Yum has make it some much better,
>>> try Fedora. In fact my only issue with them is they are starting to
>>> dumd down the distro to be more popular for others. Both with openSUSE
>>> and Fedora you can do upgrade to the next version. It works out
>>> everything for you. Just like Ubuntu.
>> I thought he was referring to the much newer release of Red Hat that
>> just came out.  Cartman came out in 1999, certainly not germane to the
>> current discussion?  Emphasis on 'current'.
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson