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Ack! The slowness of SuSE's package manager is killing me! I added the Packman and Guru repositories and now it takes literally 5 or more minutes to come up to a useable state.

I tried to get smart working, but I must be missing something. While it is significantly faster, adding repositories to the system was a pain in the ass. The first time something got screwed up. So, I removed it, deleted all the files, then re-installed. I re-added the Packman and Guru repositoies then when I used smart for the first time it indicated that it found some pre-configured repositories that the Yast package manager was using. I thought cool. Why did it not do this before?

So I go to add a package through smart, I want ncpfs, but it does not come up. I do a smart search for the package, nope; cannot find it. I visit an opensuse mirror and dig through the ever changing directory structure and see that ncpfs is in the open suse repository. I fire up the Yast package manager and 8 minutes later a search finds it. But I wonder, becase I searched for this package yesterday using Yast and could not find it. What gives?

So I figured I would install mplayer for giggles. I found it in smart but it complains that nothing supplies libartssc.so? What the hell? Oh and now that ncpfs is installed smart is finding it with a search.

Why does smart need to update the cache everytime I run a search? The same holds for the Yast Package manager. You'd think they could have learned something from apt package manager.

I have to hand it to Debian, though; they really did package management right. It's so easy to add repositories. Either editing the file by hand or using a tool like synaptic. And to take it further, Ubuntu has a nice little check box where you can enable all those extra repositories lickity-spit.

I did some cursory searching both on line and on the system. Where the hell are yast and smart keeping the repository configuraiton file? I read some smart docs that said it makes use of the sources.list file in /etc/apt and if you don't have one you should create it. Well I don't have one and even though I did create it, smart ain't using it. Where is the Yast repository list?

dann wrote: So I go to add a package through smart, I want ncpfs, but it does not come up. I do a smart search for the package, nope; cannot find it. I visit an opensuse mirror and dig through the ever changing directory structure and see that ncpfs is in the open suse repository. I fire up the Yast package manager and 8 minutes later a search finds it. But I wonder, becase I searched for this package yesterday using Yast and could not find it. What gives?

Suse 10.1 is only a week old. It seems that packages are being added as we speak. Case in point VLC. It's not in the repos yet. To their credit their version of tovid-gui actually works. Last night I used the tovid gui to re-encode xvid files to mpeg, create a DVD with menus and background music and burn in one shot. The tovid-gui had not worked for me on Arch. I'm going to give qdvdauthor another look in the next few days since there's a package available for it.

dann wrote: So I figured I would install mplayer for giggles. I found it in smart but it complains that nothing supplies libartssc.so?

I had no problems installing mplayer. Maybe because I have KDE as my desktop?

dann wrote: Why does smart need to update the cache everytime I run a search? The same holds for the Yast Package manager. You'd think they could have learned something from apt package manager.

Agreed. Apt-get is the best in my opinion. You think yast is slow try Yum in FC5.

dann wrote: I have to hand it to Debian, though; they really did package management right. It's so easy to add repositories. Either editing the file by hand or using a tool like synaptic. And to take it further, Ubuntu has a nice little check box where you can enable all those extra repositories lickity-spit.

Agreed. Now if Ubuntu could stop customizing KDE and make their packages a little more compatible with Debian.

The bottom line is there is no perfect linux distro. To me the perfect distro should be flexible, intuitive, have reasonably fresh software versions, good package management and above all must be STABLE!!

dann wrote:Ack! The slowness of SuSE's package manager is killing me! I added the Packman and Guru repositories and now it takes literally 5 or more minutes to come up to a useable state.

Again, this is because the idiots at Novell, and frankly I thank the Ximian guys (Yes I am still bitter about them making Novell choose GNOME and basically throw out the tremendious work SUSE had done on KDE for so many years) for this, had to force a new package management framework into the codebase late in it's development cycle which has resulted in a slow, sluggish and buggy package manager out of the box.

dann wrote:I tried to get smart working, but I must be missing something. While it is significantly faster, adding repositories to the system was a pain in the ass. The first time something got screwed up. So, I removed it, deleted all the files, then re-installed. I re-added the Packman and Guru repositoies then when I used smart for the first time it indicated that it found some pre-configured repositories that the Yast package manager was using. I thought cool. Why did it not do this before?

So I go to add a package through smart, I want ncpfs, but it does not come up. I do a smart search for the package, nope; cannot find it. I visit an opensuse mirror and dig through the ever changing directory structure and see that ncpfs is in the open suse repository. I fire up the Yast package manager and 8 minutes later a search finds it. But I wonder, becase I searched for this package yesterday using Yast and could not find it. What gives?

So I figured I would install mplayer for giggles. I found it in smart but it complains that nothing supplies libartssc.so? What the hell? Oh and now that ncpfs is installed smart is finding it with a search.

OK, try this:

Install the Smart packages from the Guru reposotiry, and when it suggests to add some default repositories, say no to it, once you have it up and running, go to Edit and select Channels, click New, make sure the marker is set to "Provide channel information" and click OK, now select YaST2 as the repository type, now enter this information:
Leave Priority set to 0, and "Medias" empty, and click OK. In the channel window, you should now have two entries, the repository you just added and the RPM system. Repeat the above process for the following repositories:
In the case of the updates repository, it is a YUM ŕepository which, in Smart, is know as "RPM MetaData".

When you have added all the repositories, and are looking at the channels window, click on the Close button, and hit the "Update Channels" button which is right under "File", and wait for it to download the repository data, now you're set.

Also, YaST has a classic problem sometimes where it can't find a package in the repository, I have no idea why it does this, it has happened in all the SUSE versions I've used, which goes all the way back to 9.0, and I agree this is something that should have been looked into years ago, but for some reason it hasn't been.

dann wrote:Why does smart need to update the cache everytime I run a search? The same holds for the Yast Package manager. You'd think they could have learned something from apt package manager.

You have to remember that Smart is very different from apt, it is not a single package management system, it tries to work with the existing types of repositories, in the case of running it on an RPM based distro, it can deal with all sorts of repositories, you can even mix apt4rpm, yum and YaST repositories, try doing that with apt.

dann wrote:I have to hand it to Debian, though; they really did package management right. It's so easy to add repositories. Either editing the file by hand or using a tool like synaptic.

And to take it further, Ubuntu has a nice little check box where you can enable all those extra repositories lickity-spit.

I agree with your point that Debian got package management very right, but what I don't like about a lot of Debian distros, is that in my mind there isn't a VERY GOOD KDE-centric distro that provides GUI configuration and all that stuff. I'm sure Xandros does a nice job, but they are way too outdated for my needs, and I don't wanna run Kanotix, Mepis and so forth because I don't want to deal with the issues you can run into by using the Debian unstable pools. I know the Kubuntu folks are working hard on this and so forth, but my bottom line point is that I havn't seen a YaST-type configuration system for Debian systems yet, actually there is an effort to port YaST to the Debian system. One of the things I really will give SUSE a lot of credit for is setting Xorg up correctly during the install, every time I have tried Ubuntu, I had always been forced to open up xorg.conf in a text editor, be it gedit or vi, and enter in my monitor's correct values of VertRefresh and HorizSync. SUSE's X configuration tool, SaX2, has a HUGE database of monitors and their correct values for these settings and in almost all cases, except for some very recent monitors, it can deal with this. SUSE may need to take a few leassons from Debian in terms of package management, but I think Ubuntu needs to learn from SaX2.

This is the reason I prefer RPM based distros, I always seem to find the best KDE distros in that category, take Mandriva and SUSE as an example, yes I know SUSE has GNOME too now, but the years of work they put into supporting KDE is still very very much visible, same goes for Mandriva, and yes both SUSE and Mandriva have had, and still has, their respective issues, but so does any distro in my mind. SUSE's package management may bother some people, but what bothers me about Ubuntu and Kubuntu is that it doesn't set my monitor up correctly out of the box. Everybody can learn from each other in some areas, but hey this is what Free Software is all about, having the freedom to cooperate and learn from each other.

dann wrote:I did some cursory searching both on line and on the system. Where the hell are yast and smart keeping the repository configuraiton file? I read some smart docs that said it makes use of the sources.list file in /etc/apt and if you don't have one you should create it. Well I don't have one and even though I did create it, smart ain't using it. Where is the Yast repository list?

I have no idea where YaST and now ZENworks stores repository data, Smart stores it's stuff right here: /var/lib/smart

looks like zmd keeps it files here

/var/cache/zmd/

does anybody know how to import a signing key into yast

jsusanka wrote:looks like zmd keeps it files here

/var/cache/zmd/

does anybody know how to import a signing key into yast

I think you just need to use "rpm --import <urltokey>" and it will see it automatically, but I don't know for sure. My advice to anyone using SUSE 10.1 is to not use ZENworks in any shape or form (Neither the zen-installer, zen-updaer, zen-remover or through YaST), because it's just too buggy, and just install Smart, apt4rpm or even yum and use those (All of these are actually included on the SUSE install CDs out of the box, although for Smart I recommend using the packages from the Guru repository as it includes a KDE system tray feature too, which can be used to replace the buggy zen-updater icon), works much much better.

I think you just need to use "rpm --import <urltokey>" and it will see it automatically, but I don't know for sure

ya did that but when I and guru site in yast it complains about it not have a gpg signature.

jsusanka wrote:

I think you just need to use "rpm --import <urltokey>" and it will see it automatically, but I don't know for sure

ya did that but when I and guru site in yast it complains about it not have a gpg signature.

I see, I guess it's because the Guru repository doesn't have the keys in the actual repository data. Weird. Oh well, YaST's Software Manager is now just a frontend to ZENworks, and it's damn damn damn slow for any sort of internet or network installation, I think you're much better off by just downloading and installing these four packages, Smart, and follow the predecure I mention earlier to add the repositories to it.

http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... 1.i686.rpm
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... 1.i686.rpm
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... 1.i686.rpm
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... 1.i686.rpm

Or these, in case you're on AMD64:

http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... x86_64.rpm
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... x86_64.rpm
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... x86_64.rpm
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser ... x86_64.rpm