MoonPoint Support Weblog

Installing Yum on a RedHat 9 System

For a RedHat Linux 9 system, I wanted to install Yum, which is an automatic updater and package installer/remover for Linux systems that use RPMs to manage installed software. I checked to see if Yum was already installed, but it was not installed.

# rpm -qa | grep -i yum

The Yum Download webpage listed the requirements for the latest version of Yum, version 3.2.0, as python 2.4+ and rpm 4.3 and above. I checked the version of the python and rpm packages on the system, but found they were not at the required versions.

# rpm -q --last rpm python
rpm-4.2-0.69                                  Sat 08 Nov 2003 02:37:24 PM EST
python-2.2.2-26                               Sat 08 Nov 2003 02:37:22 PM EST

Instead I needed to get a much earlier version, 2.0.8, which only required python 2.1+ and rpm 4.1.1-4.3.1. After downloading the rpm file, I installed it with rpm --install yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm. I then checked for updates for the system with yum check-update.

An update was available for tcpdump among other utilities. An rpm -q --last tcpdump command showed the following information for the version already installed on the system:

tcpdump-3.7.2-1.9.1                           Sat 08 Nov 2003 08:39:55 PM EST

I tried updating tcpdump with yum install tcpdump, but received the error message below:


# yum install tcpdump
Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - Base
Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - Updates
Finding updated packages
Downloading needed headers
Resolving dependencies
Dependencies resolved
I will do the following:
[update: tcpdump 14:3.7.2-7.9.1.i386]
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages
Getting tcpdump-3.7.2-7.9.1.i386.rpm
retrygrab() failed for:
  http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/updates/9//x86/i386/tcpdump-3.7.2-7.9.1.i386.rpm
  Executing failover method
failover: out of servers to try
Error getting file http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/updates/9//x86/i386/tcpdump-3.7.2-7.9.1.i386.rpm
[Errno 4] IOError: HTTP Error 404: Not Found

When I checked the Duke University wepage at http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/updates/9/x86/, I found it had only one file in that directory. So I needed to add another repository for updates to software for RedHat 9 systems. I found a list of such sites at http://fedoralegacy.org/download/fedoralegacy-mirrors.php. Many of those I checked in the US also no longer had the files available for download. But the DataPipe one at http://mirror.datapipe.net/fedoralegacy/ did still have files available.

I added the following line to the updates section of /etc/yum.conf

baseurl=http://mirror.datapipe.net/fedoralegacy/redhat/9/updates/i386/

The yum.conf file now has the following information in it:


[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1

[base]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/


[updates]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - Updates
baseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/updates/$releasever/
baseurl=http://mirror.datapipe.net/fedoralegacy/redhat/9/updates/i386/

I then ran yum install tcpdump again and this time was able to update tcpdump. Checking the version of the rpm installed afterwards, I saw the following:

# rpm -q --last tcpdump
tcpdump-3.7.2-7.9.4.legacy                    Sat 09 Jun 2007 05:08:22 PM EDT

Yum 2.0.8-1 Download Sites
Duke University
MoonPoint Support

References:

Yellow Dog Updater (YUM)
Linux@DUKE
RPM Package Manager
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
RedHat 9 Updates - Using Fedora Legacy
Mirror sites by country
The Fedora Legacy Project

[/os/unix/linux/sysmgmt] permanent link

Logrotate PPP Error

After first setting up a Linux server with Fedora Core 2 Linux, I received the following error message in an email message sent to root:

Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:00:42 -0400
From: root@mail.somewhere001.us (Anacron)
To: root@mail.somewhere001.us
Subject: Anacron job 'cron.daily'

/etc/cron.daily/logrotate:

error: stat of /var/log/ppp/connect-errors failed: No such file or directory

According to Bugzilla Bug 126771: logrotate error because of non-existent /var/log/ppp/connect-errors this error can be prevented by adding a missingok to /etc/logrotate.d/ppp. The problem occurs if PPP isn't used, which means there won't be a log file for it in /var/log/ppp. By adding the missingok to /etc/logrotate.d/ppp, you indicate that an error message shouldn't be produced if the log file is missing and so can't be rotated.

According to Bug 122911 - Logrotate problem if ppp isn't used and there isn't a logfile in /var/log, the problem is present in version 2.4.2 release 2 of the ppp package. I didn't add the missingok line, but instead upgraded the ppp package (use up2date --install ppp). I now have version 2.4.2 release 3.FC2.1 of ppp, which added the missingok line.

# Logrotate file for ppp RPM

/var/log/ppp/connect-errors {
        missingok
        compress
        notifempty
        daily
        rotate 5
        create 0600 root root
}

[/os/unix/linux/sysmgmt] permanent link

Sat, Jun 09, 2007 5:50 pm

Sun, Sep 19, 2004 8:58 pm