2007-02-05
An irritation with yum localupdate
One of the few things that keeps me running while I am only on
dialup is 'yum localupdate'. With a combination of
'yum check-update' and 'yum localupdate' I can get a list of
what RPMs I need to update, pull down copies of those RPMs at
work, dump them onto a USB key,
take them home, and then update them locally.
In theory.
In practice, 'yum localupdate' seems to sometimes ignore RPMs
that I've supplied on the command line if they're merely things
that need to be installed for dependencies. Then, of course, it
insists on downloading them again, over my slow PPP link, which
causes me to use rude language, hit ^C and ^\ a lot, and (this
time) finally end up using kill -9 on yum to get it to stop
(insert rant here).
Part of the problem is that yum localupdate doesn't really give
any clear picture of what it's going to do, since it is hijacking
status displays not intended to draw a distinction between stuff
that will be downloaded and stuff that doesn't need to be; this
means that things like the 'amount to be downloaded' line have no
useful information.
(Perhaps this is a sign that I should just use 'rpm -U', since
I suppose it's not as if yum is doing anything for me in this
situation; I already should have the full set of dependencies.)
Another small user interface suggestion
Dear Xine: since various modern sound systems are amply equipped to play multiple audio sources at once, your 'mute' button should mute only your audio, not the entire audio chain. That way I can turn down the Internet music stream I'm listening to in the background in favour of something of more immediate interest, like YouTube videos, without having to quit out of you entirely.
While we're here, it would be nice if you didn't block purely audio streams just because you can't get some X events in edgewise because I'm busy placing a window at the moment and my window manager has an X server grab. Especially if you happen to be iconified at the time, with your geegaws turned off.
(I know, Xine is not exactly the best application in the world for playing streaming Internet music. However, it seems to be the only Fedora Core 6 application that can consistently play AAC+ streams, which means that I am stuck with it for the moment.)
('Another'? Yes; see SmallUISuggestion, the first in the series.)