[plug] RH, RPM, and Drivespace

[Anthony J. Breeds-Taurima]

On Wed, 10 Mar 1999, Richard Wiffen wrote:

> Couple of quick questions...
> 
> I picked up the APC Pocketbook version of RH 5.2 the other day, and I'm
> getting prepared to wipe out my old (circa 1996) Slackware installation.
> 
> Has anyone else had any trouble with the APC Pocketbook?  I gather from APC's
> website that it's pretty reliable.
> 
> I also seem to remember reading somewhere that rpm/glint is able to handle
> tarballs.  I know how to uncompress and compile/make and so forth, but my
> current system is an absolute mess (I never worked out how to use pkgtool),
> and I'd like to know if rpm can actually handle tarballs as well as it's own
> RPM format.  If not, is there some way to manage tarballs?  Oh, and I assume
> rpm/glint is run as root?  The Pocketbook is a bit unclear on some things.

I'm almost certain that rpm will not handle tarballs.  What I think you may
have heard is that ALL rpms are build from pristine sources.  .... Basically
in the src.rpm fill there is a tarball (from the coder), a series of
patches (optional) and a config file (.spec) ... from this rpm does some magic
and builds a (or more) rpm(s) and the src.rpm file .... BUT its not that
simple to build the patches and the .spec file.

Yes rpm/glint need to be run as root, to install/remove rpms BUT any user can 
query the current rpm database and or uninstalled packages.

I have no experience with APC's CD but RedHat 5.2 seems pretty good to me ...
 
> The other big thing I wanted to know is, can RH mount a Drivespace compressed
> W95 partition for reading and writing?  If not, I'll set up two partitions for
> that, for exchanging files...

I don't know about this one .... I've never used drivespace :(
> 
> I think that's about it for now.  :)  Thanks!
> 
> If nothing else, this whole process has forced me to make backups!
> 
> - Richard

Yours Tony.