[Yum] beginner docs

Robert P. J. Day rpjday at mindspring.com
Mon Sep 22 13:06:28 UTC 2003


  i'm putting together a short intro to yum that will be part of a revised
RH admin course, so i might be able to contribute a newbie-level howto.

  (actually, i'll be doing two different writeups.  the first will be
newbie-level for the admin course, the second will be building a
repository for a more advanced workshop course. i've come to the
conclusion that almost all admin topics can be approached in these two
ways.  but i digress.  onward.)

  what is the rationale for multiple server entries in /etc/yum.conf?  as
alternatives?  i ask since i was trying to use the initial contents and
just doing a "yum list" on my RH severn (9.0.93) box.  this didn't work
well as the command seemed to choke on this entry in yum.conf:


[base]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/


retrygrab() failed for:
  
http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/9.0.93/i386/headers/header.info
  Executing failover method
failover: out of servers to try
Error getting file 
http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/9.0.93/i386/headers/header.info
[Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found


  ok, the problem is that the actual directory name at dulug is not 
"9.0.93", but "severn", so it's not surprising that the access fails.
but this brings up the obvious question -- why didn't yum keep going
to an alternate server in that file, as one definitely existed:

[osbeta]
name=Red Hat Linux Beta 9.0.93
baseurl=http://download.fedora.us/fedora/redhat/9.0.93/i386/yum/os


  IOW, what's the value of having multiple server entries if a failure
at one will cause the entire command to abort?  or am i doing something
wrong?  (almost assuredly, yes, i'm doing something wrong.)

rday




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