Installing PowerTools Packages

Installing PowerTools in a GUI Environment

If you're using GNOME or KDE, place the CD-ROM in your CD-ROM drive. You'll be prompted for the root password (you must to be root in order to install packages). After you type in the root password, either the Gnome-RPM or the Kpackage package management program will start automatically (depending on you GUI environment) and can be used to install PowerTools.

See Chapter 7 for specific instructions on how to use Gnome-RPM. See http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/u/toivo/kpackage/ for more information on how to use Kpackage.

If you're not using GNOME or KDE, you'll need to use the shell prompt to install PowerTools. See the section called Installing PowerTools from the Shell Prompt for more information.

Installing PowerTools from the Shell Prompt

First, mount the PowerTools CD-ROM on your CD-ROM drive.

Place the PowerTools CD in your CD-ROM drive. As root, type the following:

	  # mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
	  #
	

	Please note
	On your system, you or the system administrator may already allow users (instead of only root) to mount the CD-ROM drive. Users have this privilege if the user option is included in the /dev/cdrom line in the /etc/fstab file. However, keep in mind that you must be logged in as root to install any PowerTools RPMs.

After you've mounted the drive, cd to the mounted CD-ROM directory with the following command:

	  # cd /mnt/cdrom
	

When you list the contents of the CD with ls, you'll see the following directories: SRPMS, alpha, i386, i586, i686, noarch, nosrc, sparc, and sparc64. The SRPMS directory contains the PowerTools source RPMs. The alpha, i386, sparc, and sparc64 directories contain the RPMs for the three specified operating system architectures. The noarch directory contains RPMs which are not architecture-specific and should install on any of the three architectures.

The i386 path is used as a general example. You should substitute the correct directory for i386, depending upon your architecture and which package you're installing.

cd to the i386 directory:

	  # cd i386
	  #
	

List the RPM files in the directory with ls to see the complete list of RPM packages included for Intel-compatible systems.

You will probably want more information about a specific package before you can decide whether you want to install it. You can use RPM's querying capability to find out more information about the packages, such as the packages' functions and origination. See the section called Impressing Your Friends with RPM in Chapter 6 for instructions on how to query packages using RPM.

You can install your selected packages with RPM. RPM is a powerful command line-driven package management system. See Chapter 6 for more information on how to use RPM to install and manage PowerTools packages.

Once you have finished installing your packages, you'll need to unmount your CD-ROM. Type umount /mnt/cdrom to unmount the CD-ROM. Type eject /mnt/cdrom and the CD-ROM drive will open so that you can remove the CD.