2004.07_Yast-the Power Behind the Suse Package Management Tool.pdf

COVER STORY

Ya ST

tion tends to polarize, and one of

the reasons for this is the distribu-

tion-specific system maintenance tool.

YaST is a laconic comment and stands

for “Yet Another Setup Tool”. Fans love

it, but its license has been a source of

irritation to Open Source purists (Suse’s

new owner, Novell, has reacted to this

criticism by announcing its intention to

remove the source of this contention by

placing YaST under the GPL this year)

[1]), and many refuse to use the tool as it

is too powerful, claiming that Suse users

may learn how to manage a Suse Linux

system, but not a Linux system.

YaST offers users who are leery of con-

figuration files the ability to manage a

Linux system without the obstacles that

typically implies. This said, YaST is not

specifically targeted at newbies. The

dialogs will not mean much to users

without appropriate IT and Linux skills.

YaST’s tasks now include configuring

most system components, ranging from

user management, to setting up the net-

work, configuring the GUI-based

X-Window system, or adding peripheral

devices.

Experienced Suse users appreciate

YaST’s flexibility and prefer its text mode

as an alternative to the GUI. Both inter-

faces uses the same accelerator keys,

while the GUI also supports a mouse.

The thing that makes text mode so

interesting is the speed with which it can

handle tasks, once you get used to it (see

Figure 1). Text mode appeals to users

wanting to just install a new piece of

software, as the YaST GUI can really

slow them down, especially on

older systems.

Debian users rightly

dote on apt-get . Their

typical advice

The Other Side

The Suse installation and configuration tool, YaST, has developed into a power-

ful utility over the years. Unfortunately, some of its useful features are so

obscure that they are hardly used. BY NICO LUMMA

is: “Just type apt-get install package-

name !” and Suse fans can actually do

something like this. This implies that

Apt4RPM [2] is the “Advanced Package

Tool”. However, it is simply “apt” that is

the “Advanced Package

Tool”.

Before you take this

option, you might just

like to look into the

option of using YaST

more effectively. To do

so, launch the program

as the root user by

typing yast in the com-

mand line.

thus select FTP… , type ftp.gwdg.de as

the Server name , and press [Tab] to

move to the Directory on this server item.

When you get there add pub/linux/suse/

ftp.suse.com/suse/ (without a leading / !)

Table 1: Mirror servers for ftp.suse.com

Protocol

Server name

Directory on server (for Suse Linux 9.0)

FTP

ftp.mirror.ac.uk

sites/ftp.suse.com/pub/

FTP

ftp.plig.org

pub/suse/

FTP

ftp.heanet.ie

mirrors/ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/

FTP

ftp.esat.net

mirrors/ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/

FTP

mirror.pacific.net.au

linux/suse/

FTP

ftp.mirror.nl

pub/mirror/suse/

FTP

mirrors.usc.edu

pub/linux/distributions/suse/

FTP

mirror.mcs.anl.gov

pub/suse/

FTP

mirror.storagetek.com

pub/systems/suse/

Software Sources

When installing soft-

ware, YaST assumes by default that you

will want to access the media from

which you originally installed the sys-

tem. If you do not want to pile up the

CDs or DVDs next to your computer and

also have a quick Internet connection,

can move the arrow key down to the

Software item, press [Enter], and hit

[Enter] to select Change Installation

Source , or use the icons from the

graphical YaST version as

shown in Figure 2.

Pressing [Alt-H] opens

a menu where you

can use the arrow

keys, and then

hit [Enter], to

select an alterna-

tive installation

source, including

the ftp.suse.com Mir-

ror Servers (see Table 1).

Suse distributions are typically

available from the FTP servers just a

few weeks after the release. You can

FTP

ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu

pub/suse/suse/

to select the directory for your computer

architecture (this is i386/ for PCs) and

the distribution version (such as 9.0 ).

Then press the [Tab] key again and hit

[Enter] to confirm that you will be using

the Anonymous user account (assuming

that you do not have an account on the

server). [Alt-O] adds the new installation

source to the list.

If that does not keep you happy, you

can always download a copy of the dis-

tribution to a server of your own and

then use NFS, FTP, HTTP, or Samba to

access the copy. To quit the dialog, press

the [Tab] to access [Quit] and again

press [Enter].

Nico Lumma is the

Head of IT at

Orangemedia.de

GmbH and looks back

on years of

experience with the

practical application

of Linux in enterprise

environments.

July 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

Ya ST in the command line

L ike it or hate it. The Suse distribu-

Ya ST

COVER STORY

Figure 1: Not pretty, but a lot quicker – YaST in text mode.

Figure 2: Adding a FTP server as an installation source.

Online Update

Users wanting to keep their systems up

to date, both from a security point of

view and in general, definitely need

Internet access. There is a tool for this

task: “YaST Online Update” (YOU),

which is configurable below Software |

Online Update . You need to select a mir-

ror from the list provided by YaST below

Installation source (see Figure 3).

Users with leased lines might like to

hit [Tab] to move to [Configure fully

automatic update..] , where they can con-

figure YOU to tell YaST to automatically

look for updates at a specific time every

day.

Your other option is to select [Con-

tinue] in the dialog box shown in Figure

3 to perform a manual online update

(see Figure 4). The command line ver-

sion of you provides an even quicker

way of doing this, but Suse 9.0 only has

a GUI-based version of this tool.

In contrast to rpm -i , this command auto-

matically resolves dependencies and, if

needed, launches SuSEConfig to config-

ure the package after the install.

yast -i is quick and it delivers the

goods, but it is also error-prone. If the

RPM package name is not spelt exactly

right, nothing happens. A small, but

extremely useful tool called pin can help.

As the tool is included with the distribu-

tion, you can enter yast -i pin to install it,

and then copy the ARCHIVES.gz file from

the mirror server, or your installation

media, to the /var/lib/pin directory.

Whenever you need to install a pro-

gram (such as the file searching tool

locate ) without knowing the package

that contains the program, you can ask

pin , as shown in Listing 1. This example

finds the findutils-locate package. You

can then type yast -i findutils-locate to

install the tool.

If the software you need is located in a

messy package with dependencies that

Listing 1: pin finds software

01 kiwi:/home/nico # pin locate

02 pin 0.29 - package info for locate

04 ------------------------------------------------------------------

05 *** no rpm named locate installed

06 ------------------------------------------------------------------

08 ------------------------------------------------------------------

09 *** zgrep locate /var/lib/pin/ARCHIVES.gz

10 ------------------------------------------------------------------

12 ---> ./CD1/suse/i586/findutils-locate-4.1.7-748.i586.rpm

New Software!

If YaST has details of an installation

source, the Software | Install or remove

software item allows you to select new

packages, resolve dependencies, and add

packages to your system. However, hav-

ing said that, the procedure is slightly

over the top, if you only need to install a

single application.

There is a quicker way of doing this in

the command line:

Box 1: The alternative update tool – fou4s

If you do not like YOU, check out the

“Fast Online Update for Suse”, an alter-

native tool. Although this is a “simple”

shell script, the installation and application

are extremely straightforward. That makes

it well worth a try.

To use fou4s, first install the current

RPM, which is available from

http://fou4s.gaugusch.at/ by typing

yast -i fou4s-0.x.y-z.noarch.rpm

After you have completed this step, fou4s --

server will output a list of the mirror servers,

allowing you to choose a different server (if

you are not happy with the default mirror at

ftp.gwdg.de ).

fou4s -u --checkfou4s downloads the list of

patches for the distribution, and at the same

searches for fou4s updates. fou4s -e does a

test run of the update, without download-

ing or installing anything. You need to run

fou4s -i (as root ) to update your system for

real.

You can then copy the /usr/share/doc/pack-

ages/fou4s/fou4s-crontab file to /etc/cron.d .

This configures a cronjob that regularly

searches for updates and automatically

installs them.

yast -i packagename

GLOSSARY

Mirror server: A computer that has a 1:1 mir-

ror copy of the data on another server (ftp.

suse.comin our example), and can thus load

balance the main server.

www.linux-magazine.com

July 2004

COVER STORY

Ya ST

Figure 3: The “[New server…]” and “[Edit server…]” items allow you to config-

ure alternative mirror servers for online updates.

Figure 4: The YaST Online Update (YOU) displaying the packages for the

update.

you can’t fulfill, despite installing all the

required libraries, you can either use the

secret weapon, rpm -Uhv --nodeps pack-

age.rpm , or alternatively yast -i . If you

run this command directly for a package

that you previously downloaded (Box 1

shows an example of a package that is

not included by the Suse distribution),

YaST short-circuits and simply ignores

any dependencies.

Unfortunately, yast does not have a

simple option such as -i for uninstalling

packages. Your only option is to use rpm

-e packagename , or take the long way

home, via Software | Install or remove

software .

Professional sysadmins and power

users would welcome more command

line options. It remains to be seen

whether the announced GPL release will

prove to be an additional incentive. It

might even make the tool an interesting

proposition for other distributions.

Completely Modular

At least there is a shorter way of launch-

ing the YaST module: yast sw_single . You

can use a similar approach to launch

other YaST configuration dialogs, by

specifying their module names.

yast -l gives you a list of modules (see

Table 2). If you regularly need to add

new users, you can type yast users to

access the user management module

directly.

■

INFO

[1] YaST under the GPL:

http://www.novell.com/news/press/

archive/2004/03/pr04022.html

[2] Apt4RPM for Suse:

http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net/

Table 2: Overview of YaST modules

Module Task

answering_machine Sets up an answering machine

backup

joystick

Gaming fans can add a joystick

here

profile-manager

Change the SCPM profile of a

machine

Simple backup solution for system

data

kerberos-client

Configure a Kerberos client for

secure authentication

proxy

Use a system global proxy server

restore

Restore a system backup

bootfloppy

Creates a boot floppy

keyboard

Change the keyboard settings

routing

Routing configuration

bootloader

Changes the boot loader

lan

Set up the network adapter

runlevel

Overview of runlevels and the

system services launched in them

(on booting for example)

cdrom

Configure CD/DVD drives

language

Change the system global

language settings

controller

Allows you to configure additional

hard disk controllers

ldap

Set up an LDAP directory service

samba-client

Samba client configuration

dhcp-server

Set up and manage a DHCP server

lvm_config

Configure the Logical Volume Ma-

nager for hard disk management

samba-server

Set up a Samba server

disk

Partition hard disks (n)

scanner

Add a scanner

dns

Configuration the hostname and

the name server

mail

Set up mail transfer

security

Settings to improve system

security

modem

Set up a modem

dns-server

Set up your own name server

mouse

Fine tune the mouse

sound

Configure the sound card

dsl

Configure a DSL connection

nfs

Manage the NFS mountpoints,

allows you to mount remote

filesytems

support

If you need to contact Suse

support…

fax

Set up a fax system for one or

more users

sw_single

Install and remove software

firewall

Advanced Firewall configuration

nfs_server

Set up your own NFS server

sysconfig

An editor for miscellaneous files

below /etc/sysconfig

host

Modify the /etc/hosts file

nis

Use the Network Information

Service (NIS) client

tftp-server

Set up a TFTP server

http-server

Simple configuration of the

Apache Web server

nis_server

Set up the NIS server

timezone

Configure the timezone

hwinfo

Detailed information on hardware

nisplus

Configure a NIS+ client

Set up a TV card

idedma

For experts only: change the IDE

hard disk configuration

ntp-client

Set up a client for automatic time

synchronization

update

Update the system

users

User management

inetd

Set up the Internet services on the

machine

online_update

YaST Online Update (YOU)

vendor

Import driver CD from hardware

manufacturer

powertweak

Expert tool for editing system

settings

inst_source

Change the installation sources

view_anymsg

Display various logfiles

isdn

Configure an ISDN connection

printer

Set up the printer

x11

Set up the X-Window system

July 2004

www.linux-magazine.com

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