offline installation

[ravee20]

Hi,

Im new to linux and just installed fedora 7.
to install mp3 support i figured out that i've to use yum command.
I have no internet connection so could not install all the required
softwares/libs/rpm's using yum as yum tool requires internet
connection.
most of the websites mention installation steps for softwares using
yum command.

please suggest me alternate way to install software offline (without
using yum).
I can get the rpm's/libs etc from other system having net but i do not
find required direct url's for rpm/libs easily.

regards

[DrChuck]

I think the most common repositories for fedora packages ( besides fedora-core and fedora-updates ) are dries, atrpms and freshrpms. If you can google around and figure out which rpm's you need, and download them, they can be installed directly with rpm -ivh [packagename.rpm] If there are dependencies ( additional required packages ), you can put them all on the same command line, and they will be installed together.
I've had pretty good luck finding fedora packages by googling for the base package name, plus "fedora rpm package". While you are downloading, I would grab everything with a remotely similar name, as you won't know what other files are required until you try to install with rpm.

[ravee20]

what exactly is RPM file?
is it a complete package(archive) that consist of the all required library to install it without any dependency error or is it the automated way for
./configure
make
make install
and then prompt for the required library if missing?
secondly,
if i do'nt find the RPM file insted i find tar (archive) file for the required software (for eg. XMMS)
then how do i know
>what are the required libraries ?
>do they already exist in my system?
>if not ,where to get them? (without using yum) and which version to get?
>if i have older/newer version of library installed then how to upgrade/downgrade to required version?

what are the command for second and last question?

thanx

[DrChuck]

An rpm is a complete archive containing binaries, config files, documentation, etc., packaged by the developer for easily installation. The rpm system is used by Redhat/Fedora, ans well as some other distros. Debian, Knoppix & Ubuntu, for example, use a similar system based on .deb packages.
When you install with the rpm tool, entries are created in an rpm database, which can be queried. For example, rpm -qa will list all packages installed on your system. Pick one package from the list (example: I have an installed package mplayer-1.0-0.20.pre7.2.fc4) and do rpm -ql mplayer and you get a listing of the contents of that package.
The advantage of using packages is that they can be easily upgraded or removed, again using rpm. FYI, yum is a graphical front-end to the rpm database, and is completely compatible.
A tar or tar.gz archive, by contrast, does not put package information into a database. When you untar, the rpm database is unaware of any change.
A single rpm package is not necessarily complete - there may be required shared libraries you need to install as well. When you attempt to install an rpm, the dependency requirements are first checked, and installation will proceed if they are satisfied. If not, you will be notified what is missing. If you have an rpm package at hand which you want to install, and want to see what files are required, you can do rpm -qpR full_package_name.rpm This will list the files required, but not the packages which could supply them. If the name of the package supplying the file is not obvious, I've had good luck by googling on the file name.
Upgrading a package is just as easy as installing: rpm -Uvh full_package_name.rpm
That's a lot for now, why don't you digest this and ask some more questions. You may have some unavoidable difficulty downloading from another computer, then installing on your linux box. I frequently try to install an rpm, and then go back to find more dependencies, and try to install again.

drChuck

[ravee20]

Thanks DrChuck for helping me out on RPM installation.
Today i installed mplayer rpm though i got some dependency errors
i searched rpmfind.net and got all of them :)
well I've some linux software CDs,in which most of the softwares are in tar archive format
so please help me regarding my second query in my last post.

regards

[DrChuck]

Do you mean install pre-compiled binaries from a tar archive? If so, then you are right to assume that these have no way to check for the presence of shared libraries on your system. Suppose you do install binaries from a tar, then if you can find the main program, you can use ldd to list the shared libraries required by that binary: $ ldd /usr/bin/xine
libXv.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libXv.so.1 (0x0000003f87000000)
libXft.so.2 => /usr/lib64/libXft.so.2 (0x0000003f8e200000)
libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libXrender.so.1 (0x0000003f8ae00000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libfontconfig.so.1 (0x0000003f8aa00000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib64/libfreetype.so.6 (0x0000003f8a600000)
libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib64/libSM.so.6 (0x0000003f8d200000)

etc

drChuck

[ravee20]

i'm talking about tar archive softwares which we usually install with

./configure
make
make install

if i'm not wrong these tar archive's consist of source file and above commands are used to compile those files and create binaries.
In this process of installation,i get dependency errors after executing
./configure command
reporting somthing like "xxx.x file missing".
the problem is i can not make out which library consist of this (header)file
ok even if i resolve this one error after searching/dloading lib, next time when i again run the configure command new/next dependency error shows up.this is annoying.i cant go for internet for each error.
i want to know is there any way wherein we'll get to know
-the list of dependency libraries (not perticular file in that lib)
-do they already exist in my system
-if i have older/newer version of library installed then how to upgrade/downgrade to required version

and finally after all tries if installation fails then
how to clean/delete/uninstall the partially installed files/libs??

regards