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My cheatsheet

This is my cheatsheet for setting up distribution using rpm. I am more experienced with distributions using dpkg, so I need this a little in the beginning.

Note on Fedora: install package "yum-plugin-fastestmirror" to always get the fastest mirror!. It comes with CentOS by default and is like http.debian.net and mirrors.ubuntu.com from Debian side of Linux family.

DO NOT RUN "yum update" NOR "yum upgrade" NOR ANYTHING ELSE WHICH UPGRADES PACKAGES BEFORE SETTING PRIORIZING!

yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror

Installing Virtualbox guest additions

Start by installing dkms from EPEL.

rpm -i <package downloaded from EPEL link above>
yum install dkms
yum groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum install kernel-devel

Press HOST + D and cd to the mount point and run the Linux Additions installer.

Fedora

First enable RPM Fusion. Then

yum install VirtualBox-guest

and reboot.

Enabling other repositories

For EPEL follow the first steps for Virtualbox guest additions installing above. Read also Fedora part above and enable RPM Fusion.

RPMGforge

Download the package and install it with

rpm -i <package>

Livna

Livna is easy to enable. Just go to their homepage and follow their instructions

yum-plugin-priorities

Using multiple 3rd party repositories (EPEL, RPMforge) is dangerous so you must use priorities to be safe.

yum install yum-plugin-priorities

Ensure that it's enabled by looking at /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/priorities.conf . It should read

[main]
enabled=1

Now the plugin should be working and you must assign priorities.

Edit all .repo files in /etc/yum.repos.d and add

priority=X

to end of every section where X is replaced with actual priority.

CentOS wiki suggests the following priorities:

CentOS-Base/default repositories: everything is priority=1 except contrib priority=2

Third party repositories (EPEL,rpmforge) should be > 10 and other should be more preferred than other. I used

epel 10 rpmforge 11 rpmfusion 12 livna 12 (Livna provides only libdvdcss and other packages have been moved to rpmfusion.)

Now you should be able to safely run "yum check-update" and "yum update" or "yum upgrade".

If you have installed Fedora from Live-CD you probably want to instll LibreOffice with

yum groupinstall office

and if your native language isn't English e.g.

yum groupinstall finnish-support