From Fedora Project Wiki

1. Introduction

1.1. Purpose

This document presents basic concepts of software management on Fedora systems. It outlines the major functions of yum, the recommended software management tool for Fedora, and various graphical interfaces to yum.

1.2. Audience

This document is intended for Fedora users of all levels of experience.

1.3. Using This Document

This document is a reference for managing software with Fedora. You may wish to read some or all of the sections, depending upon your needs and level of experience. If you are a new user, start with:

These guides explain basic concepts of software management in Fedora, and introduce the various graphical interfaces for yum. Experienced Linux users should start with Section 4, “Managing Software with yum” .

Previous Versions of Fedora
This document describes the configuration of yum on current versions of Fedora. You must perform the additional step noted in Section 7.2, “Manually Authorizing Package Sources” to enable yum on earlier versions Fedora.
Avoid Logging in with the Root Account
You do not need to log in with the root account in order to manage your Fedora system. All of the commands shown in this tutorial that require root access will prompt you for the root password. The example terminal commands use su -c to provide this facility. Graphical applications that require root access will automatically prompt for the root password when launched.

Most of the examples in this document use the package tsclient, which is included with Fedora. The tsclient package provides an application for remote desktop access. The example commands for Fedora package groups use the MySQL Database group. To use the examples, substitute the name of the relevant package for tsclient.

Fedora includes a yum configuration that is suitable for independent systems with Internet access. You may use yum and related software on such systems without any additional configuration.

If your system is part of a managed network, consult your network administrators for advice. You may need to configure yum to use a network proxy server. Section 11, “Using yum with a Proxy Server” explains how to configure yum to use a proxy server. Administrators may also suggest or require that yum clients use specific package repositories. Refer to Section 7, “Configuring Access to Software Repositories” for instructions on how to configure access to repositories.

To improve performance and enable disconnected operations, activate the yum caches on your system. Refer to Section 10, “Working with yum Caching” for more information on the caching option.

1.4. Additional Resources

The yum utility has features and options not discussed in this document. Read the man pages for yum(8) and yum.conf(5) to learn more, using the following commands:

man yum

man yum.conf

Other useful yum resources on the Internet include:


Project Web site

http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/

Users mailing list

https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/mailman/listinfo/yum/

Development mailing list

https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/mailman/listinfo/yum-devel/

Check Bugzilla First
If you encounter a persistent error with a specific operation, visit https://bugzilla.redhat.com and review the bug reports for the package or packages involved. An error in a package may cause all yum operations that rely on that package to fail. Please file bug reports for Fedora packages, including yum, on this Bugzilla web site.
Previous Page - Table of Contents Table of Contents Next Page - 2. Software Management Concepts