setting up yum on Fedora Core 5 (fc5) for UCI users

warnings

• this page is for Fedora Core 5 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 5 (fc5) system set up, the very first next step is to get it updated with all the latest versions of the system's programs. on fedora, these programs come in packages, called rpm's. to get all the latest rpm's, we use a program called yum. (for those who are not familiar with yum, there is a tutorial here.)

yum downloads rpm's over the internet from repositories -- specially-organized collections of files on ftp servers. there are many rpm's to update, and some of these are quite large. this can be a slow process. therefore, updates will run more quickly if you can re-configure your yum to use a repository which is as close as possible to you on the network. fortunately, there are many mirrors (locations on the internet with copies of the exact same sets of files) of the standard fedora repositories. one of these mirror repositories is at UCI, which will be ideal for you if you're at UCI: just follow the directions in the section below to reconfigure your yum to use them. if you're not at UCI, then just skip to the section, "update your system".

it is assumed you are doing all of the following as root.

point your yum to UCI

there are three standard fedora repositories, each with a corresponding yum config file on your system. since these are all mirrored at uci, you just need to change the three already-existing files, in order to re-direct your yum to use the UCI versions of these 3 main repositories:

• 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

update your system

you can now update your system by downloading and installing all the latest versions of the rpm's on your system. (the first time you do this there will be many packages to update, and it could take quite a while, so just go get something to eat and let the system run and do its thing):

  $ yum -y update

install other RPMs

any time you want a new rpm from one of the above repositories, you can just run yum to do so. yum will automatically download and install the rpm. you don't need to know which repository the rpm comes from. excellent, eh?

• emacs:

    $ yum -y install emacs
  

  voila! you have emacs now.

• pine: if you read mail with pine on your machine, unfortunately pine is not published in the fedora or fedora-extras repositories. fortunately, it is available through a third-party repository at rpm.livna.org.
  1. Go here and follow the instructions for installing the livna-release-5 rpm, which will add livna to your yum client's list of available rpm repositories.
  2. now get pine (from livna):

       $ yum -y install pine
     

configure yum to automatically update your system daily

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 an off 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. --jeff stern.