I have lots of test installations using identical partition sizes for EXT3 or EXT4 / filesystems. the filesystem space these provided is adequate on all if running Mageia or openSUSE, but quite often not for Fedora. Working around the inadequacy on Fedora presents problems #2 & #3. Problem #1: NAICT, DNF, like Yum before it, offers no option I can recognize from its man page to download less than all the to-be-updated/installed packages before proceeding to install any packages. Thus it downloads (typically hundreds of packages), cutting into available / freespace. Then it does transaction checking before package installation begins, and after which commonly it halts, reporting some small amount of freespace is required on the / filesystem, space that obviously wasn't required for the installation to be operable. By intervening updating of packages in various bunches instead, updating, though laborious, is successful, and freespace when done is perfectly adequate, resulting in total freespace roughly equivalent to Mageia and openSUSE. Problem #2: A way to work around problem #1 is with wildcards, e.g. # dnf update g* i*, kd*, kf*, q*, per*, pyt*, u*, v*, x* y*, z* When this example is used following observance of problem #1, DNF naturally skips downloading packages already downloaded and meeting the cmdline spec, and silently deletes all already downloaded packages not meeting the spec, so that when e.g. the following is run # dnf a* b* c* d* e* f* h* the cache begins empty, and it downloads the packages deleted mere minutes ago. Problem #3: When running from say the /boot directory the same dnf command above: # dnf update kd*, kf*, q*, per*, pyt*, u*, v*, x* y*, z* dnf reports cannot install package inityada, cannot install package vmliyada, .... It ought to be smart enough not to try to install local files that are not installation package files (e.g., those ending in .rpm or any other type it might understand and support). The reason Mageia doesn't have any of these problems is that it naturally and by default downloads a small bunch, installs them, downloads another bunch, installs those, etc. Similarly, openSUSE's zypper offers options to download one, install one, download second, install second, download third, install third, etc. (DownloadAsNeeded), and another option to do more or less as Mageia's urpmi does (DownloadInHeaps), as alternatives to its default (DownloadInAdvance). Updating Mageia and openSUSE typically takes 30-60 minutes to update 600-800 packages without babysitting the cmdline, while Fedora on these installations can take several hours between waiting on the duplicate downloads and not looking at the screen at the right time to answer y or input another group of packages using wildcards. Does anyone here agree that each of the three would represent legitimate wishlist bugs, unlikely to be summarily dismissed as wontfix? -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
