Update of Fedora Core Linux for latest Software and Patches

Currently, we will just be using the stardard mirrors for the core and updates. A list of optional mirrors can be found at http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html.

For Australian Access Grids, it is recommended to use the Aarnet Fedora Mirror. You can simply download the fedora-core.repo and fedora-updates.repo files and place them in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory, as the Aarnet mirror has already been configured.

1. Log in as a normal user account. To do this, simply type your username in the box and hit the "Enter" key on your keyboard. Then type your password in the box and hit the "Enter" key again.

2. Run terminal. Do this by clicking on the Fedora Symbol "F". Go to "System" and then click on "Terminal". This will bring up a white command prompt. You may want to add a shortcut on your desktop for Terminal. This may be achieved by going to the terminal option in the menu, dragging it onto the desktop and then selecting "Copy here".

3. Switch to "super user" mode. Do this by typing 'su –' at the prompt and hitting the "Enter" key. You will then need to enter the root user’s password and hit "Enter" again. You will know that you are in super user mode because previously at the end of the command line there was a $ whereas now there should be a #.

4. Run yum update. Do this by typing yum update and then hitting "Enter". You may wish to use yumex for your updating which is detailed further on this page. During the installation of the updates, you will be required to hit yes to continue the installation process of updates. "Note" this process may take a few hours, depending on machine and network speed.

5. After "yum update" has finished you will need to reboot the system for the system updates to take effect. Make sure you are still the root user. To do this type reboot and hit "Enter". This will reboot the system.

Using Local Repositories

For Australian Access Grids, it is recommended to use the Aarnet Fedora Mirror. You can simply dowload the fedora-core.repo.txt, fedora-updates.repo.txt and fedora-extras.repo.txt files, rename them to *.repo files and place them in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory, as the Aarnet mirror has already been configured. 

Additional Repositories

As part of your installation of Fedora Core 5, you might wish to include the livna and the freshrpms repositories. These repositories contain additional software and drivers.

For example, the livna repository contains things like:

• Nvidia display drivers

• Mplayer

• VLC

• Various media players and plugins

And freshrpms contains things like

• Various media players and plugins

• Emulators

• Programming languages additions

To install these repositories, you simply run the following commands :

    rpm -ihv http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/5/i386/livna-release-5-6.noarch.rpm
    rpm -ihv http://ayo.freshrpms.net/fedora/linux/5/i386/RPMS.freshrpms/freshrpms-release-1.1-1.fc.noarch.rpm

Yum Extender

A piece of software that makes it very simple to update, install and remove software is Yum Extender which is known as yumex. It is basically a graphical user interface for yum.

To install yumex, start up a terminal session and as root issue the following command :

    yum install yumex

As you can see from the images below, the program is quite intutive.

You can select all packages to update, or simply select the particular packages you wish to up date. Once you have selected the packages, click on the “Add to Queue” button to begin the update process.

By clicking on install, you can easy search for a particular program/application by typing something into the filter section and hitting the enter button. For this example gkrellm was used (Which, by the way is a good tool to be able to watch your cpu, memory and such usage). By selecting the packages and clicking on the “Add to Queue” button, the selected packages will begin to install on your machine.

 

To remove a piece of software on your computer is basically the same process as installing software when using yumex.

By clicking on install, you can then process all of the queued items, whether they are items to be updated, installed or removed.

 

 

The repositories section of yumex, indicating which repo’s it utilizes. You can easy modify which repo’s to use the then hit the “Refresh” button for it to refresh the update and install listings.

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