Becoming SMART

I have started to run into a couple of small problems with the YaST software installer, besides the general slowness of everything, so I have decided to embark upon my SMART journey. I'm going to follow the instructions found here (man, there sure are a lot of wiki's out there!).

The first thing I learned was about the existence of /etc/SuSE-release, which is a simple text file describing the installed version of openSUSE:

$ cat /etc/SuSE-release
openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
VERSION = 10.2

Okay, so as predicted, I'm running openSUSE 10.2. And I think I have all the correct files installed:

$ rpm -q python-xml python-elementtree rpm-python
python-xml-2.5-19
package python-elementtree is not installed
rpm-python-4.4.2-76

Oops, I guess I don't. I wonder if python-elementtree is really necessary, as I'm sure if it was that my YaST installation would have taken care of it? Looking into it, it isn't listed as a dependency and YaST says it isn't installed alright. So I'll install it via YaST, rather than use the commandline as found in the web page. Hold on a sec... Okay, let's check again:

$ rpm -q python-xml python-elementtree rpm-python
python-xml-2.5-19
python-elementtree-1.2.6-41
rpm-python-4.4.2-76

There, that's better. Now, it's time to fire up SMART as root.

$ su -c "smart update"
Password:
New channel 'Packman 3rd Party Package Repository (packman)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'Current KDE applications (suse-kde-backports)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'Guru smart repository (smart)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'Latest mozilla.org packages (suse-mozilla)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'Latest KDE packages (suse-kde)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): n

New channel 'SUSE 10.2 Repository (suse)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'SUSE 10.2 Add-On Repository with non-OSS Packages (suse-non-oss)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'Guru 3rd party package repository (guru)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'Latest wine packages (suse-wine)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

New channel 'SUSE Linux Online Updates (suse-update)' detected.
Include it? (Y/n): 

Updating cache...

I didn't enable 'Latest KDE packages (suse-kde)' because of the warning on the web page, although I'm a little confused. I really don't want to be cutting edge. I have no need for the latest in graphical ui technology, so I'm pretty happy to stay with the stable release when it comes to my desktop environment. But I have to wonder if 'suse-kde' is really the "highly experimental" version? After the "Updating cache", it did plenty of fetching. Let this be a warning - don't do it in your Emacs shell window, as it wants to do the kinds of redrawing found only in Konsole. It took about five minutes to do all my channels. Then I installed the gui.

$ su
Password:
# rpm --import http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/guru-rpm.asc
# smart install smart-gui
Updating cache...                         ######################################################### [100%]

Computing transaction...

Upgrading packages (4):
  smart-0.51-1.guru.suse102@i686                      smart-gui-0.51-1.guru.suse102@i686                  
  smart-addons-0.51-1.guru.suse102@i686               smart-ksmarttray-0.51-1.guru.suse102@i686           

2.8MB of package files are needed. 1.2MB will be freed.

Confirm changes? (Y/n): 

Fetching packages...
-> http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.2/RPMS/i686/smart-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i686.rpm
-> http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.2/.../smart-ksmarttray-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i686.rpm
smart-ksmarttray-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i6.. ######################################################### [ 25%]
-> http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.2/RPMS/i686/smart-gui-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i686.rpm
smart-gui-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i686.rpm    ######################################################### [ 50%]
-> http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/10.2/.../smart-addons-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i686.rpm
smart-0.51-1.guru.suse102.i686.rpm        ######################################################### [100%]

                                                                                                          
Committing transaction...
Preparing...                              ######################################################### [  0%]
   1:Installing smart                     ######################################################### [ 12%]
   2:Cleaning smart                       ######################################################### [ 25%]
   3:Installing smart-ksmarttray          ######################################################### [ 37%]
   4:Cleaning smart-ksmarttray            ######################################################### [ 50%]
   5:Installing smart-gui                 ######################################################### [ 62%]
   6:Cleaning smart-gui                   ######################################################### [ 75%]
   7:Installing smart-addons              ######################################################### [ 87%]
   8:Cleaning smart-addons                ######################################################### [100%]

Saving cache...

# smart --gui

I have to admit, I like the YaST window a little more, as there seems to be more options, but it surely is faster. From command to dialog takes about 30 seconds, while YaST takes a good couple of minutes. And it seems to have found lots and lots of packages to update. We'll see how screwed up it makes my system!