Extras/FedoraHOWTO

= Getting started with Fedora Extras =

Fedora Extras packages are designed and tested to work smoothly with only the supported versions of Fedora Core (and Red Hat Linux) and other Fedora Extras packages. Please read RepositoryMixingProblems  to understand the compatibility problems of mixing repositories.

The Old/RepositoryLayout  document explains what is contained within the different software channels on the old download server. The old download server and its mirrors contain Fedora Extras for Fedora Core 2 and older as well as APT-RPM meta data for all supported distributions. Red Hat's official Fedora Download Server carries Fedora Extras for Fedora Core 3 and future releases.

In order to install any extra packages, you could manually download and install packages from the download servers, but in the long term it is a lot easier to learn how to use one of the automatic package management programs. Fedora Extras supports two package managers, Yum and Red Hat's up2date. Apt is only supported when using the old download server or one of its mirrors. All package managers handle automatic downloading and installation of packages that you specify. Yum and up2date are included in Fedora Core.

Using Yum With Fedora Extras
You must have the the yum package installed. On Fedora Core it is included in the distribution. For Red Hat Linux you should download and install one of our yum packages:

Now you should edit the configuration file /etc/yum.conf as detailed in [wiki:Self:Extras/FedoraSources#yum Fedora Sources].

Yum is capable of automatic failover, so it should keep working even if some of the download servers is temporarily unavailable. You should order the various URLs in the baseurl parameters of /etc/yum.conf so that nearby mirrors will be tried before your failover mirrors.

Overview Of Yum Commands
yum list yum check-update or yum list updates yum update yum install  yum search yum info
 * List all available packages.
 * See if there are updated packages available.
 * Update all installed packages that have a newer version available.
 * Install specific packages and their dependencies.
 * Search all known packages entries (descriptions etc) for word.
 * Show basic information about a package.

All of the above commands can take shell-style wildcards (*,?) instead of a package name. Check the yum man page for more details.

Using Up2date With Fedora Extras
The up2date versions distributed with Fedora Core have the ability to use yum and apt repositories. This means that up2date can be used to download and install Fedora Extras packages simply by adding the appropriate channels to the configuration file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources as described in [wiki:Self:Extras/FedoraSources#up2date Fedora Sources].

Using Apt With Fedora Extras
You should download one of our apt packages:

If you already have apt installed from a different repository project, you are encouraged to re-install apt using our enhanced packages.

On Fedora Core 1 and above you should use apt-get mirror-select to choose the best mirror for your location. For older releases, you should edit the configuration file /etc/apt/sources.list as detailed in [wiki:Self:Extras/FedoraSources#apt Fedora Sources].

You can disable the first-run activity of apt-get by adding this line to /etc/apt/apt.conf: Apt::State::FirstRun "false";

Overview Of Apt Commands
apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade apt-get install  apt-get mirror-select apt-cache search apt-cache show
 * Download package lists. Packages change several times daily, so do this often.
 * Update all packages.
 * Install/upgrade specific package(s) (and its dependencies, if missing any).
 * Choose repositories and mirrors for use with apt (Fedora Extras specific extension).
 * Search all known packages entries (descriptions etc) for word.
 * Show basic information about a package.

See man apt-get and man apt-cache for more details.

Synaptic
Apt users have an optional GUI frontend called Synaptic. After installing and configuring apt, you may install synaptic by issuing the command apt-get install synaptic.