Updating Your System with Red Carpet


Ximian started out as a company that built applications for the GNOME desktop, and it did some terrific stuff, especially the Evolution personal information manager. Ximian started branching out from the GNOME focus with an updating product it called Red Carpet. Because Ximian was acquired by Novell a few months before SUSE, Novell has been integrating Ximian products into its own product line. Red Carpet now is the main updating tool for the Novell Linux Desktop. In the guise of Novell ZENWorks Linux Management, Red Carpet also updates the Novell Open Enterprise Server.

Like the other tools covered in this chapter, Red Carpet simplifies the task of updating and installing software for your distribution. Some terminology is different, however. For example, a Red Carpet download site is called a channel, to which you subscribe to see what's new. You should, nonetheless, find Red Carpet easy to understand and learn.

Installing Red Carpet

As with APT, Red Carpet is not available through YaST. To get the latest version, visit ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/redcarpet2/ with a web browser or FTP client. Choose your SUSE version and architecture (32-bit Intel x86 or 64-bit x86_64).

You will see several RPM packages in this directory. Download these three: rcd-<version><architecture>.rpm (this is the daemon that runs in the background), rug-<version><architecture>.rpm, and red-carpet<version><architecture>.rpm. The combined file size of these three files is about 3MB, so it won't take long to download.

You can use YaST to install these packages, but it may work better to run this from the command line. Log in as SuperUser, change to your download directory, and install the Red Carpet daemon first with this command:

rpm rcd-<version><architecture>.rpm

You'll see some brief activity, and if successful, the rpm program will return you to the prompt. Repeat the process with the command line and GUI packages.

rpm rug-<version><architecture>.rpm

rpm red-carpet-<version><architecture>.rpm

Each should now install and run on your system. The Red Carpet daemon must be running for either of the other programs to work, so there's one last step in your installation. Type rcd to complete the installation. The Red Carpet daemon will now run in the background.

Running Red Carpet from the Command Line (rug)

The fastest way to use Red Carpet to update your system is through the rug command-line utility. As always when installing new software, you should be logged in as the SuperUser when using rug.

Just typing rug at the shell prompt will give you a list of rug commands. The first time you run rug, it will locate your existing RPM database, so it knows what is on your system now. To see what channels Red Carpet is using to update your system, type rug ch. You should see something like this:

subd? | Alias | Name ------+-----------------------+---------------------- | redcarpet2 | Red Carpet 2 | rcd-snaps | rcd snapshots | suse-92-x86_64 | suse-92-x86_64 | suse-92-x86_64-kernel | suse-92-x86_64-kernel 

The first column, subd?, tells you if you are subscribed to a channel that is, whether you can access and download from the listed site. In this instance, no channels are subscribed to. Let's sign up for the Red Carpet updates and the SUSE server as well. Type the following:

rug sub redcarpet2 suse-92-x86_64

Now if you get the channel list again with rug ch, you should see this:

subd? | Alias | Name ------+-----------------------+---------------------- Yes | redcarpet2 | Red Carpet 2 | rcd-snaps | rcd snapshots Yes | suse-92-x86_64 | suse-92-x86_64 | suse-92-x86_64-kernel | suse-92-x86_64-kernel 

Tip

The German server that delivers SUSE packages to APT users also is configured as a Red Carpet service. You can add it as a channel with this command:

rug service-add http://open-carpet.org/services/gwdg/


Now let's look at the GUI client and update the system.

Updating with the Red Carpet GUI

The Red Carpet graphical application operates very much like Synaptic for APT, rather than the way YaST goes about updating. It uses a tabbed interface to keep you in the know without overwhelming you with lots of material on a page. To begin in KDE, go to System, Configuration, Red Carpet. Red Carpet checks your channels for new stuff and tells you if there are updates for your installed applications (or tells you if you are current).

Click Available Software to see what applications are available in your channels that you have not installed. Use the Section menu to break all the packages down by function, if you are looking for something specific, or just browse through the alphabetical list.

If you find something on this tab that you want, select it and click Mark for Installation. An icon appears and your choice is added to the Pending Actions list on the left (see Figure 21.13).

Figure 21.13. In Red Carpet, you can see the choices you make in the Pending Actions list on the left.


When you've identified the applications you want to install or update, click Run Now to begin. Red Carpet checks dependencies and lists all tasks to be carried out. Click Continue.

Red Carpet downloads and installs your selection(s). Click OK when it is finished. You will return to the main screen, where you can choose more applications to install, or exit.

Tip

There are so many applications included in the SUSE Linux distribution, sometimes you may not know everything you've installed. Even if you're not the SuperUser, Red Carpet can help you if you just want to see if you have installed that application you just read about in a magazine. Open the Red Carpet graphical application and click Installed Applications.




SUSE Linux 10 Unleashed
SUSE Linux 10.0 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672327260
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 332

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