Fred's blog

Distribution is now in rpm form and in source form.

The functions that can be used by the pre and post scripts to interact with the user are now in a common file in /usr/share/rpm-bundle/functions. The new check_already_installed function, when called from the pre script, checks if the packages are already installed and generates a list file with the list of rpm files that aren't installed. This file is then used by the install process to decide which files to install.

• support for Xandros (Hubert Figuiere)

Download osinfo

See this article for the complete list of tested distribution and report yours if it's not on the list.

Description

The rpm bundle concept is a way to build and distribute a set of rpm. The idea is to define tools to easily constuct sets and to avoid each software maker to construct its own installer.

There are 2 tools:

1. The rpm bundle builder takes as input an xml description of the bundle, optional shell scripts and the rpm files and produces an rpm bundle file.
2. The rpm bundle installer takes as argument an rpm bundle and allows an interactive installation of the rpm files contained in the rpm bundle.

The installer is designed to display the license associated with the bundle, handle an interactive phasis and then install the rpm. The tool is implemented in 2 parts: the backend which handles all the management of the rpm bundle format and a frontend which handle all the user interface. The frontend is just a proof of concept and it will be replaced by Linux distributors and/or dekstop environment with a new program that is better integrated with the package management tools.

The frontent and the backend discuss with a very simple ascii protocol.

Usage of the tools

Edit the test.xml file to add some real rpm packages.

Then as a user use this command to create the rpm bundle:

$ ./rpmb-create tests.xml b.rpmb

As root, use the following command to install the rpm bundle:

# ./rpmb-install b.rpmb

Status

These tools are just an exploratory work and they are not to be used in real life.

Download the archive here.

All comments welcome!

cpuinfo2html allows to display /proc/cpuinfo as an html table. The table summarizes the entries that are common to all cores and cpus and highlights the differences.

Call it like that:

$ ./cpuinfo2html < /proc/cpuinfo > c.html

This will generate a table like this:

processor	0	1	2	3
bogomips	5554.17	5586.94	5586.94	5586.94
physical id	0	0	3	3
core id	0	0	3	3
cpu cores	1
hlt_bug	no
fpu_exception	yes
stepping	7
coma_bug	no
cache size	512 KB
cpuid level	2
fpu	yes
model name	Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz
siblings	2
f00f_bug	no
cpu family	15
vendor_id	GenuineIntel
wp	yes
fdiv_bug	no
flags	fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid xtpr
model	2
cpu MHz	2800.423

Thanks to my journal entry on linuxfr I have enhanced osinfo. Here are the changes in osinfo 1.4:

• added support for Arch Linux and Slackware
• fixed -k option
• added a -v option to display version
• added support for Gentoo
• moved the test of redhat at the end because it seems to be present on an Ubuntu...

Here is the current list of tested distributions:

• Arch Linux release 0.7.2 on GenuineIntel (2.6.18-ARCH)
• Debian release 3.1 on i386 (2.6.8-2-686)
• Fedora Core release 3 on x86_64
• Fedora Core release 4 on ppc (2.6.16-1.2115_FC4)
• Fedora Core release 5 on i386 (2.6.17-1.2139_FC5)
• Gentoo release 1.12.0_pre19 on i386 (2.6.16-mm1-ubik)
• Gentoo release 1.12.1 on AuthenticAMD (2.6.16-suspend2-r8)
• Gentoo release 1.6.14 on i386 (2.6.16-gentoo-r7)
• Hedinux release 2006.1 on i386 (2.6.15.7-hed)
• lfs release SVN-20050221 on i386 (2.6.16.27)
• Mandriva Linux release 2006.0 on x86_64
• Solaris release 9 on x86
• SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server release 9 on ppc
• SUSE LINUX release 10.0 on i586 (2.6.13-15-default)
• Ubuntu release 5.10 on i386 (2.6.12-10-386)
• Ubuntu release 6.06 on i386 (2.6.15-25-686)
• Xandros Desktop OS 4.0 Home Premium Edition
• Xandros Server 1.0

If you have tested on another distribution, please send me the output of osinfo.

I have created osinfo to report the type, the version, the architecture and the kernel of the Linux distribution you are running.

Currently the following distributions have been tested:

• Mandriva Linux
• RedHat Linux
• SuSE Linux

Please help me by testing on other distributions and on validating that it reports the right thing on your distribution.

Here is my backlog of specfiles:

• dkms-e1000 7.0.41 e1000-dkms.conf
• python-textile 2.0.10
• unison 2.17.1
• alien 8.64

I'll try to post the spec files I create or update for my own needs here.

I'll not upload the packages by themselves because I don't want to maintain them very closely.

I have ordered an X10 kit from Intellihome (the CK17 SmartHome kit). The CM11 should support Linux on the serial line. I'll try misterhouse as soon as the kit will arrive. Stay tuned.