inspired by a recent article at linuxtoday.com, i went looking for a short, sweet and to-the-point HOWTO on YUM for competent administrators that are already conversant with "rpm". and such a thing was not to be found. by "HOWTO", i mean, how would one start using YUM to just start listing possible upgrades, and upgrading. and configuring /etc/yum.conf to point at one or more repositories? nothing more than that. it didn't take long to find http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/General/yum_HOWTO/yum_HOWTO/yum_HOWTO.html#toc12 but this document is (nothing personal) totally inappropriate as a HOWTO. in the first place, the first six chapters deal, not with simple usage, but first of all with an overview (OK, that's cool), then how to get YUM (more appropriate as an appendix if one doesn't already have it), then planning a YUM repository (totally out of place if the poor user just wants to run the darned command), then building and installing YUM (again, out of place and more appropriate as an appendix), *then* how to yummify your server (which, by now, would surely be frustrating the poor admin who, in tears, is sitting there screaming, "i just want to run the command!!"). finally, we get to chapters 7 and 8, of which chapter 7's links appear to be completely broken, and chapter 8 simply links back to the ToC, with nary an example of a YUM command to be found. in other words, the most useful yum-newbie chapters explain absolutely nothing about how to use yum. so, after all that, does there exist *anywhere* a gentle introduction to yum client-side usage for admins who are already rpm-conversant? it would seem that the critical questions to be answered in such a HOWTO would be: 1) where does one get a list of current yum repositories, and how does one add those to the /etc/yum.conf file? 2) how does one run yum to a) see what's available in those repositories? b) upgrade/install from a repository? and not much more than that. beginners are not interested in building a repository, or yummifying their servers. they just want to run the command as a client, and install or upgrade some packages. so is there a simple doc that covers that? thanks. rday
