Installing Smart Package Manager in SuSE Linux 10.1
SuSE Linux 10.1 has lot of great stuff to offer; Linux Kernel 2.6.16, XGL, AppArmor, KDE 3.5.1, and numerous fixes and improvements. However, they released SuSE Linux 10.1 with a severely broken package manager. For those of you that do not know, Novell decided to switch package management libraries with 10.1 and thought that they would be able to get all the bugs worked out before the release date. Unfortunately, they were not even close! 10.1’s release date was pushed back just over a month and the package manager is still extremely slow and buggy, to the point of being unusable. *Update 06/09/2006* Novell has released updates that address the YAST package management issues.
Luckily, Pascal Bleser, who is better known as Yaloki on IRC and maintainer of the Guru software repository, has come to the rescue. He built a custom version of the Smart Package Manager for SuSE Linux 10.1 that contains the most important installation repositories built in and ready to go. His custom Smart package contains the following repositories and mirrors for those repositories: the main Install Source, Non-OSS Install Source, SuSE Linux 10.1 Update Source, Packman Repository, and his own Guru Repository. For most people, these are all the sources you will need.
*Update 09/05/2006* A more efficient and less error prone method of installing the Smart Package Manager can be found here, on the SuSE Wiki. When I have a chance I will mirror its contents on this page.
Now that you know who to thank and why, it is time to get started. Since the standard YaST package manager is unpredictable and unreliable, we will be using y2pmsh to install the Smart Package Manager. In a root console, type the following:
yast -i y2pmsh
If YaST fails to install y2pmsh, you can install it by typing one the following commands depending on your architecture:
rpm -Uvh http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/i586/y2pmsh-2.13.3-6.i586.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source/suse/x86_64/y2pmsh-2.13.3-6.x86_64.rpm
Once y2pmsh is installed, you need to run it. in a root console type:
y2pmsh
Once it is running you will have a y2pmsh prompt, y2pm> , now you need to add the Guru Repository. You can do this by typing the following at the y2pmsh prompt:
source -a http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.1/
source -a http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/SL-10.1/inst-source
The first command should not take more than a minute or so to complete even on a slow connection. However, the second command could take anywhere from 5-25 minutes, depending on your connection, because it requires downloading around 30-40MB of data. Once both sources have been added, you are ready to install smart. To do so, please type the following:
isc smart smart-gui smart-addons smart-ksmarttray
‘isc’ stands for install-solve-commit. This marks the packages for install, solves for dep conflicts, then commits the changes. If you get an error message and the install fails, try refreshing the guru source. This can be done by typing:
source -s
This will list the sources you have setup in y2pmsh. Note the number next to the Guru source for use in the next command. To refresh the guru source, type:
source -u thatnumber
Now you can repeat the ‘isc’ step above, and the packages should download and install. Once the packages are installed, you can exit y2pmsh by pressing: CTRL + D.
With all of that done, you can start using Smart to manage your packages in SuSE Linux 10.1. You can find a shortcut to run Smart in KMenu -> System -> Configuration -> Smart Package Manager.
*NOTE* You must click the update button for it to retreive the package lists for the sources that were added when you started smart the first time.
Using Smart
Taking from personal experience and comments on this article, I want to mention a couple of things. First, Smart is now capable of evaluating pgp keys. For this to work, you must add a keyserver to Smart. This can be done by insuring that you do not have Smart or the Smart Tray Icon running, then typing the following in a root console:
smart config --set keyserver=pgp.mit.edu
You can find detailed information on how to use Smart’s CLI in this SuSE Linux Forum post.
Another Approach
This article is not intended to be the fastest or most efficient method of installing Smart Package Manager. I felt this approach would be less problematic than other methods. For another take on Installing smart, please visit Pascal’s blog.
Good one
If you need further info, visit the following link:
http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikka.php?wakka=HowtoSmartPackageManager
Very comprehensive guide on SMART.
Thanks, package manager was really starting to drive me nuts!
Hi,
Great article, as always. But, I really hope i am “ready” to install smart, and not “read” to install it.
“Once it is completed, you are read to install smart.”
Rohan.
rohan on irc.. #suse
Thanks for this guide man
nice page, nice instructions. I would however seriously think of putting a sudo infornt of commands requiring root privleges, also sudo won’t look in the /sbin path so the yast call would then be /sbin/yast.
thanks for the help
very nice.
[…] Este artículo es una adaptación de Installing Smart Package Manager in Suse Linux 10.1 esto significa que me basé en este aunque no es una fiel copia… […]
Hi,
ZenWorks is a pain-in-the-ass, since it’s slow and buggy. I don’t understand why Novell forced OpenSuSE to make use of that proprietary (is a curse word in open-source world!!!!) piece of headache! It’s a death-sin. It sucks all the performance out of my computers especially the Pentium III is the greatest victim of that headache piece of software.
You came in with a nice, fast and lean-and-mean solution and my ‘headache’ is history. Smart really rocks and does far more updates than that tedious ZenWorks.
I find that the Open Source community of OpenSuSE should abandon ZenWorks, since that buggy software is commercial (another bad word). It’s time to place Novell on the naughty-stool! The Yast Updater was really good until ZenWorks invaded SuSE 10.1
I think that many other people will use your solution and enjoy SuSE 10.1 as a pretty fast Linux!
Many thanks,
With regards from
Tom van der Vlugt
I also switched to SMART after corrupting my package management backend using the YaST, RUG & Zen trio. Using these buggy softs I constantly ran into problems where one of the software packages couldn\’t deal with what the other was doing. In addition, this half-baked solution was extremely slow - indexing sources took forever. I\’m still amazed that Novell released 10.1 with these critical bugs… I think everyone would have been willing to wait a week or two more for the 10.1 release had these bugs been worked out.
SMART is VERY nice and extremely promissing - I personally think it would make sense for SuSE to try adopting this software as the default SuSE package management system. There are still a few things to be worked out with SMART but it\’s stable and functional NOW. One of the things I would like to see in SMART is the YaST package organization tree in which the RPM packages can be organized in several ways according to Packages, Domains, Languages, Patches, etc.
Once again, great job to the SMART developers - and for those reading this, don\’t hesitate switching to SMART, it\’s better than aspirin for the 10.1 package management blues. D.D.
while I too am amazed that 10.1 was released with its horrible pkg manager setup, I am very grateful that yaloki and sPiN came through with this smart release.
thanks!
-shuffle2
I think ZENnetwork just a mistake, what is the big reason implementing other package managment on top of YaST2? when all the while YaST2 already recognised as a powerful and stable tool. I don’t see any better for us as normal users, now my YaST2 not behave as normal. I can’t install individual .rpm file with YaST2 anymore as before. Whenever any .rpm click with it, YaST2 tend to search the repos instead of installing it. Very annoying, I need to disable the installation source in YaST2 then I can do file installation, or mostly I done it with Kpackage or command line. Now forget YOU, ZEN, rug because they rather confused us until the maintainer fix all the annoying bugs, before that Smart Package Manager really rocks! it saved my days.
Thanx for this great program. ZMD was killing me, ruined the entire system. I’m just not sure why SMART won’t recognize my suse cd’s… But that’s a small problem compared to the crap ZMD made
Good work. I spent ages waiting for yast to add repositores (I got two working but not the main 10.1 repositories) but this has been much more successful.
Thank you
also having big probs with ZMD.thank you for this great tool
This is a fantastic package manager. The reason I ditched SUSE a while back for Ubuntu was because package management wasn’t great, but now I’m happy to say I’m back, and wow SUSE has really improved!
Very nice tool. Especially interesting for those who jumps from one distribution to another quite frequently because it hides all the specific and proprietary commands developed by SuSE, RedHat, Mandriva…
I just spent 12 hours updating my SUSE 10.1 trust me it sucks why didnt i see this page 12 hours ago.
Grazie mille! Incredibile!! Smart Package Manager sei molto fantastico!
I was able to install the packages you listed here using install-apt4suse, which i found here: http://linux01.gwdg.de/~scorot/install-apt4suse.rpm
Apt and apt-libs are pre-required for install-apt4suse. After you install it type install-apt4suse in terminal followed by sudo apt update. And check out man apt and man install-apt4suse.
I am a lot happier with my second installation of suse10.1. I had downloaded the suse dvd and kubuntu, I had run kubuntu as a live cd, and after my first taste of suse\\\’s new \\\”improved\\\” updater, decided to switch to Kubuntu, but when I booted kubuntu, and i got halfway through installing flash-player, automatix auto-destructed. When i ran firefox and clicked the \\\”install plug-in\\\” button for flash, that also failed, and afterwards, the main package handler didn\\\’t work either. So I install suse 10.1 again, and when i updated using yast>online update again, much to my surprise zypp/zen was in the patch list. This was all in the same afternoon.
So far zen-updater works good, but i followed your how-to just because I\\\’m a package pig. Now i\\\’ve gone from being bummed by the dissapointing number of packages in the standard apt and smart repos to being worried I never made a big enough root partition, but it\\\’s all good.
As that funny guy Gomer Pyle use to say.Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!!! At this point in time I’ve installed the complete Smart Package Manager, plus the Smart Command Line Package(s). Finally we have software that works just great! I’m so pleased and excited to be distantly associated with such wonderful code writers. My sincerest thanks to all of you. Sure makes my life much simpler, easier and fewer headaches. As a retired guy that’s the way I like it! Many thanks.
Thank god….i tried everything and yast wouldnt let me add new package respitories….yast was so good until zenworks….
Thanks! Anyone knows how to prevent the old System Update from starting at boot and instead starting the ksmarttray update utility?
Thanks again
Valerio,
Disabling the system udpate tool is easy enough. You need to do two things. The ‘Zen-Updater’ applet that runs in the system tray needs to be disabled from running on boot. Right click the funky globe icon, click configure, click preferences, then uncheck ‘Start the software updater on login’. (ignore warning about permissions)
While this disables the applet, the Zen service is still running in the background. This can be disabled by going to Yast -> System -> System Services(Runlevel) -> Disable the novell-zmd service.
ksmarttray is not a very solid applet yet. You cannot start smart from the tray icon, and it must be ran as root. Because it must be ran as root, I am not aware of an easy way to have it started on boot without it prompting you for the root password. You could use pubkey authentication, but from a secuirty stand point, depending on your setup, this can be extremely dangerous. good luck.
Thank you very much, this is enough for me, I don’t care starting ksmarttray manually after each reboot and typeing the root password.
Thank you again I reallya ppreciate your help, Jake
Valerio
I didn’t know where else to ask this: I have selected the latest KDE channel, and I have a 64 bit machine - after the most recent update, all of a sudden all of my kde apps are looking for libqt-mt and won’t start up. Doing a smart fix says it’s looking for qt3 version 3.3.6-129 something, and it can’t find it to download. So, when I go to the software.opensuse.org site, the system lib entry for qt3 actually has 3.3.6-151 something, so it makes sense that smart can’t find the right version. So, even though I have updated the channel, there seems to be a mismatch in what is listed as being available, and what is really available. Anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this?
Thanks.
Apparently someone fixed something because the right version of qt3 was just found and installed, and all is well with my installation now.
I think the following is a addition to the very nice manual:
———————————————————-
Start KMenu -> System -> Configuration -> Smart Package Manager (SPM) and supply the root password.
SPM will ask to add a number of New channels and reply with Yes.
In SPM select Update channels (round arrow).
Close SPM.
Start Smart Package Update Checker (SPUC) and select Ignore at Administrator password.
SPUC will apear in the systemtray. (bottom right)
After about 1 minute SPUC will report updates (flashing and a pop-up screen).
Leftclick on SPUC an supply root password and select OK in the Change Summary window.
All updates will be installed.
To disable the standard SUSE 10.1 updater see Jake July 7th, 2006 response.
Hey man, thank you very much for this installation description. I’m another one who’s day was saved by yout hints. Smart Package Manager just rocks, it’ is easy to use and (most important) semms to be absolutely stable and reliably.
Pheee, I even was considerung diving into the YAST-Sources to get a hint why everything breaks..
[…] Another nice tutorial can be found here, written by sPiN: http://spinink.net/2006/05/20/installing-smart-package-manager/ […]
[…] After sucking in almost a 100 MB worth of data, the recommended procedure doesn’t yield any results whatsoever. You’re much better off following the instructions here and here too […]
Go raibh agat a duine usail
Why could I not have found this problem solver for Suse 10.1 a week ago????
I thought that there was something wrong with my computer setup until after some serious mining for answers to my predicament. At long last I’ve seen the light thanks to the wonder of SMART package tool. But why did Novell try fix something that wasn’t broke.
This is about KsmartTray
I have noticed that when you start KsmartTray for the first time and select Ignore at the Passwordwindow it will report updates and after that it will not report updates anymore.
This is because KsmartTray is running as user.
To overcome this problem do the following:
Ad as root a file in /etc/cron.daily with the properties rwx .
The name of the file is not important but can be smart.update.
The contents of this file should be:
#!/bin/bash
smart update
exit 0
[…] Installing and using SMART. (spinink.net) Installing and using y2pmsh. (theweeklyrant.com) Additional 3rd party repositories. (opensuse.org) YaST repositories howto. (linuxquestions.org) […]
Instead of using ypmsh.. yum would have been a much better option since ypmsh adds took close to 15 minutes each.