On 3 Aug 00, at 7:37, Paul Smith wrote:
> Is it better to pull down source packages(.tar) or rpm packages?
> Recently I've been installing new programs on my Redhat machine
> (mysql, php, and such) and have found it easier to pull down the
> source packages, compile it, and configure. But most of these
> packages (incl. Apache), according to their documentation get
> installed under /usr/local/"program". The rpm seems to install
> them elsewhere. Is this for security? Which would be the
> preferred and safest method to use rpm or source? I realize you
> can customize the rpm packages as well.
It depends on if you can find both versions of what you want. The
main difference is that rpm keeps a database of all the installed
packages, and it gives you a tool to install/remove packages (it
also has commands to query packages, etc). Tarballs are manual,
the easiest to customize, but also the hardest to get working
sometimes. Binary packages in general can be problematic due to
different libc versions, missing shared libs, etc (sometimes all
they do is dump core :(
The best thing is if you can find a src rpm of the version you
need. They install to /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS. Then you can do an
'rpm --rebuild' (after tweaking if you like) and install a binary
rpm compiled for your system. Cool, eh?
Steve
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