Have I mentioned recently that Redhat sucks?
A while back, I had a problem with Redhat, whereby RPM wasn't warning me that a particular upgrade would render my whole system unbootable. Today, I got this official Redhat reply to the bug report I submitted on the subject:
Because Unix always gives the sysadmin enough rope to shoot him/herself. If you administrate a system you are supposed to know what you do.
Ignoring for a moment, the disgusting word 'administrate' (what's wrong with 'administer'?), I would like to draw attention to the concept of the "package manager". The package manager is the reason we use modern Linux distributions instead of just unpacking tarballs, Slackware-style. The whole point of having a package manager is so that it will ensure that software installations and upgrades are performed cleanly: that upgrading from A to B doesn't break C (or in this case, that upgrading from A to B doesn't break B).
When a package manager, in this case Redhat's 'rpm' can not handle the task it was meant to perform, that distribution is broken. Turning around and blaming the victim for the heinous crime of trusting the package manager to do what it was supposed to do is just... totally wrong.
Suffice to say, from this day henceforth, I will do my utmost to convince any client, customer, employer, friend, neighbour, or anyone I overhear discussing Linux in the pub that Redhat is a useless pile of fetid dingo's kidneys, and that you'd be more productive having someone beat you over the head with a large block of wood than attempt to use it.
Just when I thought I were the last futurama fan on the planet... you mentioned your 'shiny metal ass'. Thanks!
*That* is the quality of writing acceptable in someone who speaks officially for RH - in bug report replies, no less? What is the guy, like 15? That's something I'd expect from a stereotypical BSD guy, or the dude in Dilbert with the suspenders: "Here's a quarter, kid, go buy yourself a real OS."
Almost makes me glad our department seems to be going Debian (and bucking the RH trend on campus).
What exactly was the problem?
Is it far to blame Redhat is an rpm doesn't declare the correct dependencies?
I'm guessing that wasn't the issue.
So with no details as to the problem how can we really believe it was RH's fault and not yours. Cough up the details and let others judge for themselves.
if you'd have followed the _first_ link, you'd be able to read "the details" ...
if you'd have followed the _first_ link, you'd be able to read "the details" ...
Updating a redhat server is an exercise in Jobian patience and persistence. I have never, ever come across something as unfriendly and as easily breakable. Nevermind the fact that if you try to stick to 'rpms only' you have to pull them down from a dazzling variety of sources (some of which seem less than reputable), but it's practically guaranteed that unless you never install or upgrade anything that didn't ship on the redhat CD's, no two RPMs will play nice with one another. They'll fight you kicking and screaming and in a fit of fury will trash your valuable data faster than a windows XP reboot.
I just wish Rackspace would offer debian, so I can never ever be forced to deal with an RPM again. Fuck redhat!
As someone who learnt to hate Redhat for a while, I came across apt-rpm at the start of the year and have been loving it ever since.
For more info: http://freshrpms.net/apt/
(Mostly) No more hassles with dependancies (it doesn't happen much these days). Hell, I can even install packages like gstreamer and mplayer without any hassles. And running apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (debian users should be familiar with this) daily keeps things in good shape.
Really, at the end of the day, its not that rpm sucks, its just that there isn't a nice delivery machnism in place (like apt or yum) out of the box to make installing 3rd party software easier.
Along similar lines: Mandrake uses RPM also, but uses urpmi to control them (just like Debian packages with deb files, and uses apt to control them).
I've been using it for about 2 years now, and I've *never* had a dependency problem or anything break. Importantly, I don't just use the Mandrake-approved RPMs either, I have a list of sources from a group of private contributers, including packages I've built myself, and urpmi makes them all play nicely together.
I regularly run
urpmi --auto-select
which goes through all the installed packages and finds updated versions in my sources (which can be CD-ROMs, HTTP, FTP or whatever), and installs updated dependencies as required. Again, I've never had a problem with this, and I have 4 machines using Mandrake in this way (2 servers, a laptop and a desktop machine).
It's not quite as sophisticated as apt (i don't think you can do version pinning, for example) but it's more than adequate for my humble needs.
So go and check it out, meatbag!
> Because Unix always gives the sysadmin enough rope
> to shoot him/herself.
Which is why a sysadmin should always set the safety before attempting to tie his/her shoelaces.
I fuckin' hate Redhate. It is absolute fuckin garbage!!! I'd love to punch whoever invented it right in the face for all my wasted time.
I prefer Slackware...
First time reading this blog, just wanted to say hi.
dood:
why don't you jet right on down to comp usa and git yerself the freshest copy of WINXP Pro SP2 right from the get go? Why are you even wasting yor time fooling with all this Linux nonsense? SP2 even includes free anti-virus and firewall that turn themselves on right away? And also, no more fooling with rpm's and package dependencies. Why? Cuz u can just go download any file you want for XP. Some nice websites even install usefull programs for you for use with the latest most reliable, most secure windows product ever! EVER!!!
p.s. I can't wait for Longhorn!! all my hacking progrrams will run soooo much better ;)