Tao of Mac

Mar 9th 2003 · 2 min read

RAQ550/Packages

Introduction

Despite the flexibility of the RAQ550, I found myself lacking some of the basic (and not so basic) packages I use on other systems, so I started poking around in search of an easy and low-maintenance way to install them on it.

Since the RAQ550 underpinnings are a variant of , it made sense to investigate rebuilding SRPMs for it. I've been picking them out from the main 8.0 package list at FreshRPMs.net, and have had no problems so far (the RAQ550 uses RPM 3.0.6, but the package structure for most SRPMs seems to be identical).

Setting up a minimal RPM build environment:

Log into your RAQ550 as admin, and build the following directory tree:

~admin/rpm --+-- BUILD
             |
             +-- RPMS
             |
             +-- SOURCES
             |
             +-- SPECS
             |
             +-- SRPMS
             |
             +-- tmp

To ensure rpm rebuilds the packages inside it, create a ~/.rpmmacros file containing, at the very least:

%_topdir /home/.users/112/admin/rpm
%_tmppath /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/tmp

(Yep, that's the admin path on my RAQ550. Go figure.)

Build Procedure

The build procedure is pretty much always the same for unmodified packages:

$ cd rpm/SRPMS
$ wget http://apt.freshrpms.net/redhat/8.0/en/i386/SRPMS.os/screen-3.9.11-10.src.rpm
$ rpm --rebuild screen-3.9.11-10.src.rpm

rpm then goes about its business, and if everything goes OK, you just have to watch the output for this:

...
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/screen-3.9.11-10.i386.rpm
...

Then just su and install the package normally:

# rpm -ivh ../RPMS/i386/screen-3.9.11-10.i386.rpm

Package List

Here are some of the packages I have successfully built (or rebuilt) under a vanilla RAQ550, along with their URLs:

GNU screen

# wget http://apt.freshrpms.net/redhat/8.0/en/i386/SRPMS.os/screen-3.9.11-10.src.rpm

expat

There seem to be some header and type changes on the official Sourceforge version that break the Sablotron build later on. Also, the Sourceforge SRPM does not provide separate expat and expat-devel packages, so I rebuilt from the 8.0 SRPM with:

# wget http://apt.freshrpms.net/redhat/8.0/en/i386/SRPMS.os/expat-1.95.4-1.src.rpm
# rpm --rebuild /tmp/expat-1.95.4-1.src.rpm
...
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/expat-1.95.4-1.i386.rpm
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/expat-devel-1.95.4-1.i386.rpm
...
# rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/expat-1.95.4*

The Mozilla JavaScript library

(needed for Sablotron, built from the Ginger Alliance SRPM)

# cd /tmp
# wget http://download-2.gingerall.cz/download/related/js-1.5rc4-2.src.rpm
# rpm --rebuild /tmp/js-1.5rc4-2.src.rpm
...
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/js-1.5rc4-2.i386.rpm
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/js-devel-1.5rc4-2.i386.rpm
...
# rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/js-*

Sablotron

After installing expat and JavaScript, I rebuilt the Ginger Alliance RPM with:

# cd /tmp
# wget http://download-2.gingerall.cz/download/sablot/sablotron-0.97-1.src.rpm
# rpm --rebuild /tmp/sablotron-0.97-1.src.rpm
...
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/sablotron-0.97-1.i386.rpm
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/sablotron-devel-0.97-1.i386.rpm
...
# rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/sablotron-*

curl

More of the same. Start off with:

# wget http://apt.freshrpms.net/redhat/8.0/en/i386/SRPMS.os/curl-7.9.8-1.src.rpm

Freetype

$ cd ~/rpm/SRPMS
$ wget http://apt.freshrpms.net/redhat/8.0/en/i386/SRPMS.os/freetype-2.1.2-7.src.rpm
$ rpm --rebuild freetype-2.1.2-7.src.rpm
...
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/freetype-2.1.2-7.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/freetype-utils-2.1.2-7.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/freetype-demos-2.1.2-7.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/freetype-devel-2.1.2-7.i386.rpm
...

bzip2

Turns out that the bundled bzip2 library on the RAQ550 is not quite up to scratch. No worries, just rebuild this one:

$ wget http://apt.freshrpms.net/redhat/8.0/en/i386/SRPMS.os/bzip2-1.0.2-5.src.rpm
...
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/bzip2-1.0.2-5.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/bzip2-devel-1.0.2-5.i386.rpm
Wrote: /home/.users/112/admin/rpm/RPMS/i386/bzip2-libs-1.0.2-5.i386.rpm
...

These had to be installed with --force (never a good sign, but everything seems to be working fine)

Next stop, a full version of 4.3.1... Later.

Fetchmail

(todo: hesiod, autoconf)

RPM4

...needs Python? Christ.

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