[ale] How do people deal with RHEL?

[James Sumners]

Wow. My reply was cordial compared to a lot of the exchanges on this
list (I even thanked you for telling me about the EPEL repository).
And it's the one that's going to get you in a huff? Okay.

I'm not sure where you are getting your Debian information. The
"Debian way" is most certainly not one of "compile everything
yourself." And the distribution certainly doesn't pull in 3rd party
repositories. The situation there is the same as with Red Hat; if a
3rd party repo exists, and you want to include it, go for it. The
difference is that the mainline, supported by the organization,
distribution includes more software than you would ever care to
install. So if you find a need for some piece of software, chances a
very good that you won't have to hunt down some 3rd party repo.

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 2:27 PM, scott mcbrien <smcbrien at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 1:48 PM, James Sumners <james.sumners at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The information on which RHEL I am using is not missing from my
>> original post: "Fetching Obsoletes list for channel: rhel-i386-es-4".
>> That is "Fetching packages list for RHEL 4 i386." As a Red Hat guy you
>> should be able to understand that.
>
> Oh 1000 pardons for my oversight, you're right, I am a moron.  Forgive
> me for spending my time responding to the core of your thread which
> was BLARG WHY DOES RED HAT DO THIS?!?!?
>
>
>> I never said I wanted bleeding edge software or even newer versions of
>> the software available. I complained that RHEL is woefully limited in
>> the packages it offers to the point that it frustrates me every time I
>> want to install a new package ("new" as in "not previously
>> installed"). You make the assertion that I'm coming from some fast
>> moving distribution; have you seen the times between Debian
>> releases[1]? They are just as slow as RHEL releases[2]. Also, yes,
>> ntop was around in 2005. Its first release was at least as far back as
>> 1998. It's not "new" software.
>
> I assumed fast moving, like Ubuntu, but the point was more a distro
> where someone compiles everything possible and makes it available via
> repos.  Or you were a user who was used to compiling stuff from
> source.  Given the crux of your complaint, I didn't think it was a
> flawed assumption.  To find out that your a debianista, it just
> confirms my assumption.  While Debian may not be a fast moving distro,
> people compile a ton of stuff for it, and Debian integrates many
> community repos into their distro, where as RHEL certainly does not.
>
> After a little more research, you're welcome BTW, it looks like ntop
> was with Red Hat Linux on the Powertools CD, but was removed when Red
> Hat moved to RHEL.  Likely because of one of the other items I
> outlined earlier on how Red Hat chooses packages for RHEL.  If you
> have a RHEL subscription for High Performance Cluster, or HPC, the
> ntop package is in that channel, but it's only for RHEL5.  Not that it
> really helps you on your RHEL4 box, this second, but Red Hat has
> compiled it and made it available.  I think the HPC channel is
> included in any RHEL5 Advanced Platform subscription.
>
> It's exchanges like this that cause me to not want to read the ale
> mailing list anymore, nor respond to people where I think I could
> provide help, so who knows, this might be my last post.
>
>> As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I know that I could build the
>> package from source. I don't want to do that. Not only is that a
>> maintenance nightmare (if I wanted the same package on all 5 of my
>> RHEL servers then I would have to do the build 5 times), but I would
>> have to install extra software just for the purpose of building. GCC
>> is not installed on my servers, and there shouldn't be any reason to
>> do so. I prefer to only have software installed on my servers that is
>> necessary to run, maintain, and diagnose the server. The fact that my
>> predecessor allowed X to be installed on these servers bugs me to no
>> end (and also another of my gripes about Red Hat -- it installs too
>> much crap by default).
>>
>> I did not know about the EPEL repositories, and I might start using
>> them. But they won't solve the problem I face today. Even these repos
>> don't contain the package I want[3]. And that's exactly what I was
>> bitching about in my original post -- lack of software available via
>> the the package manager.
>>
>> [1] -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Release_history
>> [2] -- http://linuxmafia.com/faq/RedHat/releases.html
>> [3] -- http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/4/i386/repoview/letter_n.group.html


-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59