Setting up up2date and yum on Fedora Core 4 (FC4) for UCI users

warnings

this page is for Fedora Core 4 only. click here for a list of yum setup instructions on other versions of Fedora.
also please note that these instructions DO NOT WORK ANY MORE. the links have changed, the repositories are no longer carried by their hosts, etc etc. This page is kept here ONLY for archival purposes. update your system to the current version of Fedora.

Introduction

Once you've got your Fedora Core 4 (FC4) system set up, the very first next step is to get it updated with all the latest new rpm's. The best way to do this is to set up the yum and up2date programs so that you can update your system using remote (on other server) rpm yum "repositories".

FC4 comes set up for accessing Redhat's yum rpm repositories, but using UCI's mirrors of these repositories instead can be much faster for local users. Here are instructions on how to set up your system to point to UCI's mirrors of:

the base fedora repository
the fedora-updates repository (for patches/updates)
the fedora-extras repository (for extra programs, such as firestarter, and so on)
a third-party repository, for getting the pine rpm so you can read email in text-mode with pine.

NOTE: there is a serious unaddressed and unannounced security bug in up2date (but not yum) for FC4 which affects some people's systems. there are several ways to work around this bug, one of which is to avoid using the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory completely. but i prefer to, so i just run yum manually each day from the command line (see step 3, below) to keep updating my system until the bug is resolved. the bug is that the up2date GUI applet does not see new rpm's that are needed, and thus, the rhn-applet's blue checkmark example system-up-to-date rhn-applet icon stays blue, i.e., it does NOT change to a red exclamation mark example system-needs-updates rhn-applet icon . thus, you are led to believe that everything is fine on your system --- when it isn't. thus, when you set things up the way i am telling you, running yum manually to update each day is mandatory until the bug is fixed, and your up2date will operate automatically from there on in via cron.

Directions

back up your old /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file and replace it with this. the most important line in this file is:
```
   repomd fedora http://fedora.redhat.com/
```
this line sets up FC4's up2date to use yum, and for yum to look in your /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory for files -- each file containing a remote repository it should check for updates and installs.
now that up2date uses yum and looks in /etc/yum.repos.d/, we need to change the files in there to point to UCI for the 3 repositories we want to set up:
- back up your old /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo file and replace it with this
- back up your old /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo file and replace it with this
- back up your old /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-extras.repo file and replace it with this
you can now update your system using UCI's mirror, either with up2date:
```
   up2date -f -u 
```
or directly with yum:
```
   yum -y update
```
be SURE to do this right after you install your new FC4 system. there will be MANY packages. also, because of a serious unaddressed and unannounced security bug in up2date, be sure to use the yum version, not the up2date, until the bug is resolved.
furthermore, any time you want a new rpm, you can just run a yum (or up2date) command to do so, without worrying which repository it came from. the command will automatically download and also install the rpm. for instance, my fc4 system did not come with emacs. so once i got yum set up, i just ran this:
```
  yum -y install emacs
```
pine: if you read mail with pine on your machine, unfortunately pine does not come with fedora or fedora-extras. fortunately, it is available through a third-party repository:
1. save this as /etc/yum.repos.d/dries.repo
2. install dries' GPG key
3. now run:
```
  yum -y install pine
```
now you have pine installed (and automatically updated) on your machine.
if you want to make yum run automatically, then check that the pseudo-service is on for levels 2 through 5:
```
% chkconfig --list yum
yum             0:off   1:off   2:on    3:on    4:on    5:on    6:off
% _
```
if you get off's on any of the levels 2 through 5, then run this to turn yum on automatically each day:
```
% chkconfig --levels 2345 yum on
```

please write me at jas at uci.edu with any suggestions, improvements or corrections. thanks.