nixCraft

Hello All,

I really got lots of help and support in this forum so as I said earlier I think I really shall stay here and develope my skills with you and share my knowledge here with you too. Maybe my English is not too good but I shall try my best in order to explain every subject I shall talk about.

My first article here shall be about "smart", because I use it alot on my SuSE 10.1 system.

What is smart ?
Smart is an open source meta-package manager just like yum and apt, it can manage RPM, DEB and Slackware packages and provides a clean architecture to add new package and repository formats (called channels in Smart). Not to forget that Smart is released under the GNU GPL.

From where to get smart ?
For SuSE users you can get it from here http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/rpm-...=System/smart/
For Fedora users you can get it from here
http://wraptastic.org/pub/i386-linux/RPMS/
For Debian users you can get it from here
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/source/smart
You shall need the following packages installed on SuSE: rpm-python, python-element. On Debian you shall need these: python2.4-gtk2, python2.4-dev


How do I install smart ?
First under any rpm based distro. put all the packages in one directory lets say /home/user/Desktop/smart and then just do the following:
The command executed above shall install the packages all together, remmber this command can only be executed if all dependencies are solved.

What is the first step after installation ?
The first step after installation is to update the smart package channels, so that you can get new software in the smart repo's or as smart calls it channels. To update tha channel just do the following: How to use smart ?
Now if you are a user always seeking GUI tools I suggest you install the GUI for smart. First to check if it is already installed or not run the following:
if it returns the smart gui then it is installed if not continue reading to see how.

1) Installing a package
To install a package using smart just follow this syntax: smart install
ex: installing the missing smart-gui

Code:

smart install smart-gui

2) Upgrade a package
To upgrade a package using smart just follow this syntax: smart upgrade
You can also upgrade your whole system using this code:

Code:

smart upgrade

But don't forget this shall take hours and hours on I really high Internet Connection, if your using a Dail-up !!! Never do it or maybe you shall never hear the phone ring again

3) Remove a package
To remove a package using smart just follow this syntax: smart remove
ex: To remove the gftp package do the following:

Code:

smart remove gftp

4) Search for a package
To search for a package using smart just follow this syntax: smart search
ex: to search for a kernel package do the following:

Code:

smart search kernel

5) Get Info about a package
To get information about a package using smart just follow this syntax: smart info
ex: To get information about the kcalc package do the following:

Code:

smart info kcalc

6) Dealing with smart channels
As we said smart uses channel instead of repo's, so if you want to add a channel that hasn't been added when you run

Code:

smart update

just do the following:

Code:

smart channel –-add http://software.opensuse.org/download/KDE:/KDE3/SUSE_Linux_10.1

To remove the channel:

Code:

smart channel -–remove http://software.opensuse.org/download/KDE:/KDE3/SUSE_Linux_10.1

To disable it just replace --remove with --disable

Finally, there are lots of other cool stuff you can do using smart just go and read the man page for it or you can always go back to their site which is found here: http://labix.org/smart

I really wish you like it and sorry for this mini howto, maybe I shall add to it later if nobody did.

Best Regards,
ReMSiS

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LivE Free 0r DiE
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Hey,

smart work

Thanks for sharing with us!

PS: This post belongs to tutorial section. Mod please move it.

ReMSiS,

Yo thanks for sharing man Glad to know this forum helping out!!!

@Tom, moved post to tutorials.

Appreciate your post!

__________________
Vivek Gite
Linux Evangelist
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Do you run a Linux? Let's face it, you need help

Thanx for your reply I am happy u liked it

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LivE Free 0r DiE
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Don't mension it man, really I am having a good time around here. And I appreciate your coming by.

__________________
LivE Free 0r DiE
L!nux rul3z aLL