yum

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Chris Aitken <chris-n/jUll39koHNgV/OU4+dkA at public.gmane.org>
| 
| I've hit a roadblock with trying to get iPod nano working under fedora 7.

I've never tried to get an iPod Nano to work on Linux.  I don't have a
Nano.  They do look cute but it appears as if Apple doesn't even want
them to work except with iTunes.

I did get a Creative Zen V working under FC7 (x86-64).  I chose to try
Gnomad2.  I ended up having to fix a number of bugs in that program
(portability bugs -- it worked in 32-bit mode).  I now have CVS commit
permission on that project.  This is not the kind of adventure I
recommend to you with your level of luck and experience.  I don't even
recommend it to me.

One of the great things with Linux is that you can get anything to
work with enough time.  But it is important to figure out when to cut
and run or all your time gets eaten.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure that getting the Nano working on FC7
should be easy.

| The
| roadblock is that yum is broken. It points to repositories that don't work.

Out-of-the-box, that isn't true.  Perhaps you've made some changes
that have made it true.

Have you kept track of all your changes?  That is one of the most
important things that you learn by experience: always keep track of
what you've done in a way that lets you undo it.

I use a source code control system to keep track of my config file
evolution.  This works less well in the world of GUI config tools.
And for you it would probably take a considerable amount of time to
learn about, say, rcs.

| I
| can't ping the repositories - so it's not just yum - I guess those
| repositories have been retired.

Normally yum works from a list of mirrors and when one fails, it moves
to the next.  So what you've described should not happen with a stock
setup.

I don't know if livna has mirrors.  It might be a bottleneck (but it
isn't a stock repository).

If I remember correctly, yum tells you what the repository is when it
runs into trouble.  You should tell us this in your problem report.

| I've asked several times in the iPod thread if
| there is a working repository and how I can point yum to it. I've had no
| response, so I'm starting a thread to ge my yum working.

Big problems need to be broken down into little ones.  Certainly
getting yum to work for you should be an important early step.

| I saw a post from someone when I was googling this subject. He got sick of yum
| breaking in rh/fedora and switched to debian. The post was entitled 'apt-get
| delete fedora, apt-get install debian'. For all the things I want to do, have
| I outgrown rh/fedora?

Unlikely.  But it is your choice.

Fedora itself is fairly careful not to include things made
questionable by the US (and other) laws on "Intellectual Property".
That means that MP3 stuff cannot be in Fedora.

Livna is the escape-hatch: it includes lots of things with
questionable legal properties.  But it isn't part of Fedora proper and
you pay a price for that.

If you want this stuff to "just work", Ubuntu and Linspire seem to be
willing to push the legal envelope and hence makes things a bit easier
for users.

| If I can get yum fixed I would rather stick with fedora. I have managed (with
| your help) to get my system doing everything else I want it to
| (ripping/burning to CD, recording in audacity, configured emu1212-m pci
| soundcard, printing/printing across network, etc.).

That is promising.

| I get it that you guys are working for nothing - and I have no doubt that I'm
| one of the more frustrating guys to help. Thank you.

Your problem reports are not complete enough for us to make good
guesses as to what is going on.

Furthermore there are hints that you are doing random and scary
configuration changes.  A complete report of all changes is needed so
that we can guess the state of your system.  Certainly what you do
report suggests to me that you've broken it in some creative ways.

Example: Lennart, a good diagnostician, is guessing that the problem
is that Fedora is crap.  If you gave him more relevant information, he
wouldn't make what I assume is a wild and inaccurate guess.

This message has taken me perhaps half an hour to compose.  And at
best it will only helped you a bit.  This may not be a great use of my
time.  For example, using the same amount of time to fix a Gnomad2 bug
might help a lot more people.

I do understand being on the other side of this problem.  I've
submitted a fix to OpenWRT a month ago and cannot find out why there
has been no response.  I just don't yet know how to tap into the
social structure of that project.  I've used the official bug
reporting mechanism (trac), email to the developers' list (multiple
times), and IRC (many times).

Good luck!
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