PackageKit Frequently Asked Questions
Generic questions
- Please see http://www.packagekit.org/pk-faq.html for the most up to date list
Fedora specific questions
What's the status of GPG key import?
The decision to use PackageKit over pup or pirut in Fedora was taken only very late in the Fedora planning process. At the time the decision was made, PackageKit had just branched for 0.2.x. 0.1.x was in bugfix and trivial fix mode, with no new features allowed. RichardHughes, maintainer and primary developer of PackageKit had also just started working at Red Hat, and so had lots of getting up to speed with all the processes and procedures.
The GPG key import and EULA agreement code was coded for 0.2.x as this was new and experimental, and broke lots of existing code, but it did let us to the GPG key import in a sane way that was transparent from a transaction point of view. The decision was not made about whether GPG support was needed in 0.1.x (which was probably my fault). This meant we did not discover that the 0.1.x code could not do the key importing correctly until very late into the Fedora 9 freeze. Some hacky code was written for 0.1.x to allow the user to agree to the prompts, but this was not localised, the dialogue looked pretty rubbish and the interaction (having to requeue the transaction manually) was really bad.
The solution? Let 0.2.x stabilise for a month of so in rawhide and then backport to Fedora 9. When the code is all 100% working I'll be pushing to updates-testing for people to try.
Why can't I install multiple packages with pkcon, gpk-install-package or system-install-packages?
In 0.2.x you can. The API was modified to allow this, so from 0.2.1 onwards you can send multiple packages or files to be installed from the command line. The diffstat from 0.2.1 to 0.1.11 is far to large to backport this API change, and so this feature will have to wait for a few weeks before 0.2.x is backported to updates-testing repository.
Why can't I install multiple packages with 0.1.x or 0.2.x?
We are looking for input on how the user interface should look like. Jump on the PackageKit mailing list if you have any ideas.
What about group installations ?
Request for enhancement has already been filed at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=435768
system-install-packages and gpk-install-file do not work when run as the root user!
Sure. There's two bugs here, one mine and one somebody elses. The first is that the 0.1.11 tools do not test for authentication fail on the second auth attempt, and silently exit. This is fixed in 0.2.1, and probably will be backported in the meantime.
The second is that GTK+ tools should not be run as root. Any GTK+ program run as the root user is a massive security hole -- GTK+ just isn't designed with this in mind. There are numerous attack vectors when running as root, and so we shouldn't be letting programs do such insane, insecure things.
Lots of f10 packages are showing up!
I have been running F9 testing for a while and I'm now getting notified of hundreds of fc10 packages.
You should run:
yum clean all
This is a problem with PackageKit being confused by some pre-F9-release metadata you had laying around.
PackageKit won't work without NetworkManager
PackageKit 0.1.0 uses NetworkManager to get network state. 0.2.x provides unix fallbacks and also allows admins to tell PK to ignore NM using the config file. 0.2.2 will be backported soon.
PackageKit won't work with my proxy server
Short answer: We're working on it.
Long answer: packagekitd runs as root. This means any session policy will not be used, and any http_proxy variables will have to be exported system wide. Uisng 0.2.1 you can set the proxy settings in the /etc/PackageKit/PackageKit.conf config file - In 0.2.2 we are fixing this to allow the user to change the system proxy values for PackageKit in the session - hopefully with everything working without any user interaction.