Update All Package Versions on Your SUSE Linux 10.0 Machine

Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
By Scott M. Morris

Digg This - Slashdot This Posted: 21 Dec 2005

Applies to:

• SUSE Linux 10.0

Introduction

Everyone likes to keep an updated system. This is true both in terms of security updates and software versions. Fortunately, SUSE 10 provides for both of these types of updates. It's security update mechanism is called Yast Online Update, or YOU. This makes sure that any security patches available for your current software are downloaded and applied. YOU will not be covered here. I would like to outline how to make sure, through YAST, that you have all packages on your system updated to the latest possible version. It's actually quite simple.

It's worth a note, however, to mention that because a lot of these packages are bleeding edge, slight system instability may occur from performing the updates listed here.

Installation Sources

First, we need to make sure that we tell YAST every place that it can install software from. These places that YAST uses to install software are called "Installation Sources." There are several of these sources available for SUSE 10. Let's make sure that YAST knows about them. Go ahead and open YAST.

Make sure SOFTWARE is selected in the pane on the left. Then, select INSTALLATION SOURCE from the options on the right:

A window comes up titled "Software Source Media." This is where we tell YAST about where to look for available packages to install:

To illustrate how to add these, let's put in the PACKMAN Installation Source, first. From this "Software Source Media" window, click ADD, then HTTP:

A little window comes up asking you to fill in the information about the Installation Source. It will already have HTTP selected. All we need are the server name and the directory on the server. In the server name, type packman.unixheads.com, and in the directory, put suse/10.0. When you're done, click OK:

After a little patience, you'll see that the PACKMAN Installation Source appears in the list of our "Software Source Media" window:

You will also notice that there is a column called REFRESH. It will be set to OFF. Let me take a second and explain what this is.

When you go into YAST to install software, you will probably want to be browsing the very latest of what's available. If the REFRESH value is set to ON, it will "refresh" the list of available packages from all of your Installation Sources when you go in to install packages in YAST. If it is set to OFF, it will not refresh these lists. The great thing about having it ON is that you will have the very latest available software at your fingertips when you go into YAST to install packages. However, the drawback is that it can take several minutes to refresh each of your Installation Sources. Personally, I love having access to the bleeding edge. So for me, I like to have it refresh, and I will turn all of my installation sources ON. Alternatively, if you notice that one of your sources always takes forever to refresh, you can turn that one off from this screen.

So we have added the PACKMAN Installation Source. Here is a list of all of the sources that I have added on my machine. Feel free to add any or all of them, as you prefer:

UPDATE (2005-01-12): I have found faster mirrors for some of these installation sources, and have changed them accordingly. I also found that they seemed faster if they were all HTTP servers. Thus, they are all listed as HTTP now.

YAST Installation Sources
Name	Type	Server	Path
PACKMAN (we just did this one)	HTTP	packman.unixheads.com	suse/10.0
GURU	HTTP	ftp.gwdg.de	pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.0
NOVELL KDE Supplementary	HTTP	mirrors.kernel.org	suse/i386/supplementary/KDE/update_for_10.0/yast-source
NOVELL Gnome Supplementary	HTTP	mirrors.kernel.org	suse/i386/supplementary/GNOME/update_for_10.0/yast-source
SCHIELE	HTTP	pi3.informatik.uni-mannheim.de	~schiele/suse/10.0
SCOROT	HTTP	ftp.gwdg.de	pub/linux/misc/suser-scorot/suse100
FERNANDEZ	HTTP	www.polinux.upv.es	~vfernandez/suse/10.0
SUSER LIVIUDM	HTTP	ftp.gwdg.de	pub/linux/misc/suser-liviudm/10.0
USR LOCAL BIN	HTTP	ftp.gwdg.de	pub/linux/usr-local-bin/10.0

Note: Other Packman mirrors can be found here.

When you get all of these in there, you can click FINISH to close this window.

If you know of one that isn't here that should be or one that is here that shouldn't be, let me know via my author page.

Alrighty, now that YAST knows where to go and how to get there, we need to perform the system update.

Global Package Version Update

Let's open YAST (or go back to it if you still have it open). Make sure SOFTWARE is selected from the pane on the left. Select SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT from the options on the right:

The YAST package installation window appears. If you set REFRESH to ON in your Installation Sources, it also refreshes the lists of available packages from each one. If this takes too long for your taste, you can turn the REFRESH to OFF for the Install Sources during everyday use. However, if you are updating your system packages, as we are here, you will definitely want REFRESH set to ON for all of them. If not, doing the update is fruitless, because YAST will not even be aware of the newer packages sitting out on the Installation Sources.

Again, if a particular installation source takes excessive time to load, please turn the REFRESH to OFF for that install source. They are 3rd-party sources, and thus, neither Novell nor myself are able to speed them up in any way. If they take too long, it's quick and easy to disable them.

After a few minutes, you will see the window appear. In the FILTER drop-down box in the upper left corner, select PACKAGE GROUPS:

All of the package groups appear in a drill-down tree. In this pane, scroll clear to the bottom, and select the very last option, called "zzz-All":

Next, we'll go over to the right pane. Right-click anywhere in this pane. A small menu appears. Select ALL IN THIS LIST. Another small flyout menu appears. Select UPDATE IF NEWER VERSION AVAILABLE:

If you scroll through your list, you will see that many of the packages are in blue, with a black and green REFRESH icon next to them:

To perform the update, click ACCEPT in the lower right corner of the window.

Another window will probably appear, called CHANGED PACKAGES. It is just resolving dependency issues for you (don't you just love SUSE?). It is safe to click CONTINUE here:

YAST then begins downloading and installing all of the newer versions that your system has available for it from all of your Installation Sources. During this process, you will probably be prompted for your SUSE 10 installation discs, so you'll want to have them handy. There may be as much as 1.5 or 2 Gigabytes' worth of updates available. When it is finished, it will ask if you wish to install more software. Just click FINISH.

Conclusion

It is great to have so many Installation Sources available. Once you have put them all into YAST, you can then perform your system-wide update. This downloads and installs the latest versions of all the software on your system. I recommend performing this update once a week to twice a month. This way, you can download the stuff as it becomes available. What a great way to keep your system up to date. Go SUSE.

Reader Comments

• Great step by step tutorial... Kudos to you....
• Extremely useful!!!!!
• very useful, but all those sources can't seem to handle much bandwith. My first attempt at updating via this method took over 12 hours to complete.
• This is very interesting, but hardly something that should go into "newbies," unless one enjoys the thought of newbies trashing their systems. Just to see what would happen, I tried this in the lab. The desktop became unuseable, forcing a reimage on the test machine.
• very helpful for a new user like me and clear to understand
• Very useful and informative even for the newbie. However, I still have a question: What do the colors mean in Yast? I see red, blue or black text, blue or black check marks, and other symbols too. What is the significance of each?
• This is how you get xine, kaffeine and mplayer working properly in SuSE.
• Great. But it doesnt say upgrade from what ? I was attempting to upgrade from SUSE 9.1 and it does not work at all. But it doesnt matter now as I so fed up with trying to upgrade from 9.1 and with YAST that I've had it. Wiping my disks and putting on FC4. Bye bye SUSE.
• Very good instructions for newbies. However, there is no mention of what to do when conflicts occur.
• I followed your tutorial, now I have yellow and purple, pink and magenta text and there's snow and flowers falling across the screen. What did I do wrong? I'm a newbie.
• Apparently some readers can't read. The article is about keeping 10.0 up-to-date. Yet someone complained that it doesn't work for upgrading from 9.1. Great article, and an easy way to keep updated.
• My only query is, what happens if two sources have the same changes?
• very good. Please explain the purpose of the COLOURS in YAST (blue,black,red...)
• I found it EXTREAMLE useful for me.
  Alex
• This CoolTip is for 10.0 release, but it seems to work well with the links (not checked all) when one replaces 10.0 with 10.1 and checking also in the whole URL. Thanks for this Package Update compilation!
• Very interesting. It works ! But when I change the mirror shit happens. I think I make a mistake when i fill in the installation source. How is this exactly done ?
• Yes, this is the only way the job is done. This is the kind of article a forum needs. 99% of the articles from this a forum (like most forums) are completely useless and time consuming. Please restrict access.
• I have always been careful to install packages from SUSE only. Here, there is an example for installing from 'packman'. Which are the 'safe' sites for downloading packages from ?

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