The Installation Window

The installation window is used to install or upgrade packages on the system. It contains a option menu across the top, a package list to the left (sorted in a tree by group), some buttons for manipulating the tree in the centre, a package information summary to the right and a row of action buttons along the bottom of the window.

The package list is initially primed with the packages from a number of user defined directories. The default list is:

/mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS
/mnt/cdrom/SRPMS
/mnt/cdrom/RPMS
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/alpha
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/sparc
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch

Using this default list, if you have a Red Hat CD mounted when you open the dialog, the packages from the CD should come up in the list.

The packages in the package list are coloured to indicate their relation to packages currently installed on the system. If a package currently installed (version and relase numbers match) on the system, it is coloured green. If a package is newer than what is installed on the system, it is coloured blue. If a package is older than what is installed on the system, it is coloured grey. This is just the default colour scheme. It can be changed in the preferences dialog.

The option menu at the top of the window can be used to filter the list of packages in the package list. For instance, if you have a directory where you download all the errata packages for your distribution, you can set the filter to only show packages newer than ones installed on the system. This way you can see which packages have to be upgraded. You could then press the select all button and the upgrade button to upgrade those packages.

To select packages, click in the check box in the right hand column of the package list, or just double click on the row. The select all and unselect all buttons can also be used to manipulate the selection. The unselect all button will unselect all packages. The select all button will select all packages that match the current filter. The add button in the column of buttons opens a file dialog which you can use to add more packages to the package list.

Along the bottom, there are a number of buttons along the bottom of the window. The buttons are query, install, upgrade, check sig and close. Here is a short description of what they do:

Query

This brings up an information dialog for the selected packages similar to the one you can bring up for for installed packages. The buttons at the bottom are for operations appropriate for packages that haven't been installed yet though (install, upgrade, check signature).

Install

This button will install the selected packages on the system. If there are any dependency conflicts, a dialog describing these problems.

Upgrade

This button is similar to the install button. The difference between install and upgrade is that upgrade will remove old versions of a package from the system before installing the new one. For most applications, this is what you want. For libraries, you may sometimes want to use install instead. When the developers of libraries make binary incompatible changes, they change the version number in the filename of the library. If you choose upgrade for this library, it will remove the old version, which some programs still need, and install the new version, which may not satisfy the dependencies of those other packages.

Check Sig

This option will check the signatures on the selected packages. When a package is created, the size and md5 sum of the archive portion of the package are recorded in the header. You check these signatures to see if the package has been corrupted since it was created with this feature.

Also, the author may wish to sign the package using PGP or GPG (GPG support only exists in RPM >= 3.0). If you have these utilities installed and configured on your system, these signatures will also be checked by this tool. These sort of signatures can be used to verify that the package was created by (or at least signed by) who you think did.