OpenSuse

OpenSuse on the Multi-Boot machine

Zypper

Learning about OpenSuse. Apparently zypper is the command line equivalent of yum.

zypper is a command-line interface to ZYpp system management library. It can be used to install, update, remove software, manage repositories, perform various queries, and more.

List Repositories
- zypper lr

glenn@opensuse:~> zypper lr
# | Alias        | Name                  | Enabled | Refresh
--+--------------+-----------------------+---------+--------
1 | repo-debug   | openSUSE-11.2-Debug   | No      | Yes    
2 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss | Yes     | Yes    
3 | repo-oss     | openSUSE-11.2-Oss     | Yes     | Yes    
4 | repo-source  | openSUSE-11.2-Source  | No      | Yes    
5 | repo-update  | openSUSE-11.2-Update  | Yes     | Yes

Refresh Repositories
- zypper refresh

glenn@opensuse:~> sudo zypper refresh
root's password:
Retrieving repository 'openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss' metadata [done]
Building repository 'openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss' cache [done]
Retrieving repository 'openSUSE-11.2-Oss' metadata [done]
Building repository 'openSUSE-11.2-Oss' cache [done]
Retrieving repository 'openSUSE-11.2-Update' metadata [done]
Building repository 'openSUSE-11.2-Update' cache [done]
All repositories have been refreshed.

Clean repositories
- zypper clean

glenn@opensuse:~> sudo zypper clean
root's password:
All repositories have been cleaned up.

Check / List updates.
- zypper list-updates
  zypper lu

glenn@opensuse:~> sudo zypper list-updates
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Repository           | Name                                | Current Version | Available Version | Arch  
--+----------------------+-------------------------------------+-----------------+-------------------+-------
v | openSUSE-11.2-Oss    | glibc                               | 2.10.1-9.1      | 2.10.1-9.3        | i686  
v | openSUSE-11.2-Update | update-test-affects-package-manager | 0-2.36          | 0-9999.1.2        | noarch
v | openSUSE-11.2-Update | update-test-interactive             | 0-2.36          | 0-9999.1.2        | noarch
v | openSUSE-11.2-Update | update-test-optional                | 0-2.36          | 0-9999.1.2        | noarch
v | openSUSE-11.2-Update | update-test-reboot-needed           | 0-2.36          | 0-9999.1.2        | noarch
v | openSUSE-11.2-Update | update-test-security                | 0-2.36          | 0-9999.1.2        | noarch

Update system
- zypper update
  zypper up

glenn@opensuse:~> sudo zypper update
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

Nothing to do.

Install a package
- zypper install <packagename>
  zypper in <packagename>

zipper install pysol

Package information
- zypper info <packagename>
  zypper if <packagename>

glenn@opensuse:~> zypper info pysol
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...


Information for package pysol:

Repository: @System
Name: pysol
Version: 4.82-435.114
Arch: i586
Vendor: openSUSE
Installed: Yes
Status: up-to-date
Installed Size: 32.8 MiB
Summary: Nice solitaire game
Description: 
PySol is an X11 solitaire game with a number of nice features,
including hints, autoplay, unlimited undo, player statistics, demo
mode, selectable card set and background graphics, and integrated help.
It currently plays over one hundred different games and variants, and
has a plug-in architecture which makes adding more easy.

Search
- zypper search <packagename>
  zypper se <packagename>

opensuse:/etc/zypp/repos.d # zypper se pysol
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name  | Summary             | Type   
--+-------+---------------------+--------
i | pysol | Nice solitaire game | package

Zypper Repositories

Seems very similar to yum. Repository files are kept in /etc/zypp/repos.d and have the .repo suffix. There are 5 repositories installed by default.

glenn@opensuse:~> ls /etc/zypp/repos.d/ -la
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2009-10-24 07:58 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 2009-10-13 22:27 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  165 2009-10-24 07:58 repo-debug.repo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  161 2009-10-24 12:03 repo-non-oss.repo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  149 2009-10-24 12:03 repo-oss.repo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  168 2009-10-24 07:58 repo-source.repo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  141 2009-10-24 12:03 repo-update.repo

An example of the content of the .repo files follows ...

glenn@opensuse:~> cat /etc/zypp/repos.d/repo-update.repo 
[repo-update]
name=openSUSE-11.2-Update
enabled=1
autorefresh=1
baseurl=http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.2/
type=rpm-md
keeppackages=0

Adding a repository

I added the NVidia repository to zypper.

zypper ar http://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/11.1/ nvidia

That's zypper add repository url name

Booting Errors

Multi-booting several distributions with OpenSuse as one of those. Fedora's boot loader chainloads OpenSuse's boot loader. This isn't working. I keep getting Grub error 18 no matter what I try changing in OpenSuse's boot loader.

Solved by booting Fedora 12, which is actually handling all booting, and editing /boot/grub/menu.lst to add the boot stanza from OpenSuse's boot loader. This is exactly the same stanza that refused to boot on it's own. I think that in this case grub error 18 is misleading. Probably a problem with the version of grub that OpenSuse uses.

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