If you weren’t already aware of that, Red Hat sucks big (I was tempted to write that they suck my dick, but maybe my dick is not big enough to match Red Hat’s suction capacity). One more time, they find tremendously difficult to fix a bug that was reported back in January and that cripples some basic existing functionality of EL5.3!

There is a post on the CentOS ML that reminded me that puplet doesn’t tell me anymore that I have updates in 5.3. That’s the upstream Red Hat Bug 480339 - puplet does not show updates, reported on 2009-01-16 and still “NEW” (it might get fixed in EL 5.4 though), albeit marked as…  Priority: urgent, Severity: high.

This is a known issue with 5.3, and it has been listed in the CentOS 5.3 Release Notes, however there was no real workaround so far — except for using yum to check for updates.

Johnny Hughes has (surprisingly!) decided to be more active than expected, and he has provided an interim patch, which is an upgraded dbus-python-0.82.

Red Hat, you suck.

dbus-python-0.82.4 was also added to Odiecolon.repo (32-bit and source).

Emesene 1.5 does build (so to speak; it’s Python), but it can’t run on EL5 (most likely it needs a newer Python):

File "/usr/lib/emesene/ConversationUI.py", line 596
  template[0] = ''.join(x if i % 2 == 0 else '' for i,x in enumerate(template[0].split("$")))
                           ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Too bad, as the announcement said: «No more gui locks».
Users of Mandriva Cooker can find it in contrib/backports.

That’s an easy one:

• Added fontforge-20090622. Still ugly as a software though.
• Added gnome-specimen-0.3.

In brief:

• Updated Sylpheed to 2.7.1.
• Added google-translate (ASTranslator, a Qt4 applet: screenshot)
• Added ncftp-3.2.2
• Added duplicity-0.5.18
• Added ssmtp-2.6.3 (to relay through a GMail account: basic settings in /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf, then test with: /usr/sbin/ssmtp recipient@domain.com < bodyfile)
• Added xdialog-2.3.1 (built for Gtk+2 only; basic tutorial, looks better in Gtk+2)

As usual, yum clean all is highly recommended for a guaranteed update of the repodata.

Hopefully there aren’t issues to be fixed, as this Friday I’m out of town.

In brief:

• Updated gxine to 0.5.904 (don’t ask me what’s new, I don’t know).
• Added p7zip-9.04 + p7zip-light-9.04.
• Added gdm-themes (extra GDM themes, useful especially for Scientific Linux).
• Minor fixes leading to rebuilds of xine (build options) and acidrip (cosmetic fix in the spec file).

As usual, yum clean all is highly recommended for a guaranteed update of the repodata.

NOTE: Older versions of the packages (e.g. gxine-0.5.903) are not stored by the repository for space reasons (currently, the 719 RPMs take about 0.9 GB), thus making sure the repodata is updated is essential. When in trouble… and in doubt… yum clean all.

Although nobody bothers to tell me whether the repo works for them or not, I’ve decided to add a few more applications to it:

• geany-0.17 and a number of geany-plugins-*-0.17.1
• bluefish-unstable-1.1.6 (because 1.3.x requires a newer GTK+, and 1.0.7 is just too old; it can be used to browse via SFTP/SMB/FTP, read this old post)
• pida-0.5.1 (using vim-X11)
• gazpacho-0.7.2 (en passant)
• sbackup-0.10.5 (not for advanced users)
• webmin-1.485 (it allows you to completely screw your system)

As usual, yum clean all is recommended for a guaranteed update of the repodata.

I might be out of town for today…

Added to Odiecolon.repo:

• PyChess 0.8.4
• PyTraffic 2.5.4 (screenshot)
• belooted-0.1.4 (jeu de belote: EN, FR; screenshot)
• Gnome Hearts 0.3
• ghextris-0.9.0 (screenshot)
• pdfedit-0.4.3

As usual, yum clean all is recommended for a guaranteed update of the repodata.

Human-readable changelog:

• Added Sylpheed 2.7.0, a great lightweight mail client with fewer dependencies (and fewer plugins than Claws). BTW, it knows to thread the summaries, something Thunderbird only learns with version 3. Added as a dependency: GnuPG 2.
• Added Mercurial 1.3.1.
• Added Gnaural 1.0, an old faiblesse of me.
• Added GnoCHM 0.9.11, despite being much slower than xCHM (also in this repo).
• Added AcidRip 0.14, which is simple and practical (and has fewer Perl dependencies than other popular DVD rippers). Note that I had to use lsdvd-0.15 instead of 0.16, so I rebranded it as lsdvd-1.15, because otherwise AcidRip can’t process the list of the DVD contents on EL5. It happened to other people too.
• Added gnormalize-0.6. Added as a dependency, mppenc/mppdec (Musepack support).
• Added dar-2.39 + KDar 2.10 (backup).
• Added Luma 2.4 (LDAP GUI tool).
• Added Trickle 1.07 (bandwidth limiter).
• Added fpc-2.2.2 + Lazarus 0.9.26.
• Added Sweep 0.9.3 (homepage).

yum clean all is recommended for a guaranteed update.

Right now, the repository has the following number of RPMs: 235 in SRPMS, 35 in noarch, and 396 in i386. The grand total is… 666. Wow. I feel diabolique…

Just a couple of them:

• Added the missing dependencies (otherwise, EPEL has them too) libsigc++20, glibmm24, gtkmm24, cairomm to fix GParted and Eiciel.
• Added soundconverter-sl for the users of Scientific Linux, who can’t install the regular soundconverter. It will pull gstreamer-plugins-extra (which has MP3 and tag support) instead of gstreamer-plugins-ugly (needed in EL and CentOS).

I definitely would like more success or failure reports from other users of EL5 clones…

UPDATE:

• Added gstreamer-plugins-ugly-sl-0.10.9 - THIS IS FOR SCIENTIFIC LINUX ONLY! SL uses a modified gstreamer-plugins-extras which conflicts with gstreamer-plugins-ugly (it should conflict with RPMforge’s and RPM Fusion’s too!) because they both include libgstlame. SL users need to install this package instead of the regular gstreamer-plugins-ugly.

Sort of (dependencies not always mentioned):

• Added libmms-0.4 to fix gnome-plugins-bad, and rebuilt the latter.
• Added gnome-commander-1.2.7 (newer versions won’t build).
• Added Dillo 2.1.1 (and FLTK2 en passant).
• Added aria2c 1.3.1.
• Added emesene-1.0.1.
• Added emelFM2 0.6.0.
• Added diffuse-0.3.4 (as an alternative to Meld).
• Added dosbox-0.73 (works great with the MS-DOS version of Pushover).
• Added GParted 0.3.9.
• Added PyRenamer 0.6.0.
• Added SoundConverter 1.3.2.
• Added AlsaPlayer 0.99.80 (+alsaplayer-fft, alsaplayer-mac).
• Added mac-3.99 (Monkey Audio, CLI).

KNOWN ISSUE WITH SCIENTIFIC LINUX 5.3: Because SL uses a modified gstreamer-plugins-extras (to make use of lame, taglib, libid3tag, libmad), it conflicts with gstreamer-plugins-ugly (it should conflict with RPMforge’s and RPM Fusion’s too!) because they both include libgstlame. This makes SoundConverter impossible to install, as it requires gstreamer-plugins-ugly.

Humanized changelog:

• Fixed the missing dependencies for Deluge and aMule.
• Removed Git and QGit because they require way too many Perl packages. People who need more than CVS should pull whatever they need from EPEL.
• Added Pushover.
• Rebuilt GIMP 2.3.15 and 2.3.14 to appear in RepoView as Graphics, not Multimedia.
• Rebuilt GXine to require xine-lib-extras-freeworld, so you could actually hear something.
• Added AntiWord 0.37.

Hopefully, all the files are uploaded correctly. I also hope I’ve not cleaned up too many of the old files. Oh, and yum clean all shouldn’t hurt.

Obviously, it may have a few missing dependencies for those who don’t use any other non-official repository, but don’t worry: the packages are somewhere on my laptop, just let me know and I’ll fix the issues this weekend.

Otherwise, the relaunched Odiecolon.repo is meant to be used as an independent repo, that is without EPEL, without RPMforge, without RPM Fusion. I hope it’s still compatible with EPEL, but I have now stopped using EPEL. Yup.

I am particularly interested in bug/conflict/“RPM hell” or success reports for:

• clean installations of CentOS 5.3, Scientific Linux 5.3, StartCom-AS 5.0.3, with the latest updates applied;
• systems that have used one or more of EPEL, RPMforge, RPM Fusion in the past and that have performed the indicated or other reasonable steps to clean the non-official packages, yet they experience some kind of inconveniencies with Odiecolon.repo v2;
• systems that use other 3rd-party repos (other than ElRepo and Adobe’s).

I lack testing machines, and I don’t use virtual machines, so if you run into trouble, you know why this happens. Don’t shoot the piano player…

I was really tired these days, and I have not been working on the revamped Odiecolon.repo as much as I’ve wanted to. I still have to decide tonight what doesn’t go to it. I personally plan to even skip EPEL if possible, not only RPMforge.

I’ll have to test the new repository with Scientific Linux 5.3 too, and to check the possible conflicts (they include fftw3-3.1.2, gstreamer-plugins-extras-0.10.9, lame-3.97, libid3tag-0.15.1b, libmad-0.15.1b, taglib-1.4; I will have fftw3-3.2.1, gstreamer-plugins-ugly-0.10.9, gstreamer-plugins-bad-0.10.8, gstreamer-ffmpeg-0.10.5, lame-3.98, libid3tag-0.15.1b, libmad-0.15.1b, taglib-1.5).

And I haven’t made my mind yet on a few packages currently existing in EPEL: I’d want to have them in Odiecolon.repo too, but again, I’ll take the final decision tonight.

ODIECOLON.REPO WILL BE RELAUNCHED IN A COUPLE OF DAYS.

To be able to use the restructured Odiecolon.repo, you will need to do the following as a pre-requisite:

• Stop using RPMforge, and remove its repo file.
• yum -y remove libdvdread libdvdnav libcaca lzo vlc
• yum -y remove mplayer mplayerplug-in mplayer-common mplayer-fonts mplayer-skins mplayer-docs mplayer-codecs*

The relaunched Odiecolon.repo will normally keep being compatible with EPEL, but it should not require EPEL for satisfying the dependencies. On the other hand, it will definitely be incompatible with RPMforge, at least when comes to multimedia packages!

As for the multimedia packages, it will include major applications with their dependencies: VLC 0.9.9a, MPlayer with Mozilla plugin, SMPlayer, the restricted gstreamer plugins, and probably more.

The multimedia packages are rebuilt with modifications as compared to RPMforge, with the possible effect of supporting more multimedia formats while dropping a very few less-used formats. For instance, VLC and MPlayer will use external, shared versions of FFMPEG and Live555, not internal, static copies. One of the changes in building MPlayer is that it will include a unique skin that will replace the default idiotic one (Blue) with Plastik 2. If you really liked the default skin and hate the new one, then you probably shouldn’t bother to use Odiecolon.repo.

The announced restructuring of Odiecolon.repo won’t take place during this weekend. Several reasons prevent me from doing that. ETA unknown. Keep in touch.

OK, RPM Forge is kinky, partially broken, incompatible with EPEL and so on.

I don’t like RPM Fusion either, no matter what reasons they have to be the way they are.

EPEL is less than perfect too, but still… I prefer to rely on it — at least for now.

I plan to [find a way to] get rid of RPM Forge by the end of the week (so I give myself 6 full days for that), and to have in my Odiecolon.repo whatever “restricted multimedia” is reasonably normal to ask for (except that I don’t like XMMS). Yet, I don’t know what version of VLC I should be able to build (1.0.0 won’t support the Firefox plugin because of gcc).
» Read more…

Added to Odiecolon.repo:

• eiciel 0.9.6.1 (ACL editor for Nautilus)
• HomeBank 3.4 (4.0.x requires newer GTK+ than used in EL5). Extract example_file.tar.gz for a sample file.
• recordmydesktop + gtk-recordmydesktop 0.3.8 (might require EPEL for dependencies)
• verbiste-gnome 0.1.26 (and the corresponding GNOME applet)

Added to Odiecolon.repo:

• gnuchess 5.0.7 + xboard 4.2.7 (somehow, EPEL’s eboard seems to fail to start gnuchess)
• spe (Stani’s Python Editor) 0.8.4.h + winpdb 1.3.8

Building other chess games on EL5 is a difficult task. PyChess has some dependencies that can’t be satisfied (pygtksourceview requires gtksourceview2 2.2.x, whereas the latest that builds with the current GTK+ is 2.0.2), and I suppose GlChess is an even more impossible task. Oh, and the antiquated gnome-chess 0.4 has a horrendous way of drawing the bitmaps, so I decided to stay with XBoard.

This introduces a period of calm with regards to Odiecolon.repo: I’ll be away from my CentOS 5.3 laptop until July 3.

I have added to Odiecolon.repo a few applications:

• gnomad2 2.9.4 (although I can’t know for sure it works: I’ve made my Samsung YP-U3J MTP-free, and it’s seen as a regular USB stick)
• speedcrunch 0.10 (the 0.10.1 tarball has broken translations)
• gnome-mastermind 0.3.1 (homepage)

…and a copy of Sagasu, just to make people use less and less RPMforge. Please, don’t ask for catfish, as I don’t like it.

What I failed to build: the unofficial GNOME equivalent of KTeaTime, an applet called… Teatime. Versions 3.0 to 3.3 have heavy Ruby and Ruby-GNOME2 dependencies, which I’ve found exaggerated and hard to satisfy or build on EL5. The last release written in C, version 2.8.0, builds and installs, but it fails to load the images even when correctly installed. That was a mystery. Older versions won’t even build.

P.S.: Oh, and I am also short of inspiration on how to provide build RedNotebook.
» Read more…

The simple way to use it is to install odiecolon-repositories-5-3.noarch.rpm. Or browse the repository.

Otherwise, read more about this repository in the info page hosted on this blog, or on the Odiecolon server.

As a tiny incentive, here’s the theme I am using with CentOS 5.3:

This repository was set to fulfill some personal needs of the moment, and obviously it can make more harm then good to some users and to the kittens.