How to use the Web rpm2html database

Welcome to the rpm2html archive.

The goals of rpm2html are also to identify the dependencies between various packages and to find the package(s) providing the resources needed to install a given package. Every package is analyzed to retrieve its dependencies and the resources it offers. These relationships are expressed using hyperlinks in the generated pages. Finding the package providing the resource you need is just a matter of a few clicks!

However, navigating a large rpm2html database can be non trivial, here are some information with the hope that it will help you to to find the RPM packages you need to maintain your system:

• The navigator header
• The main page
• The colormap header
• The index by group pages
• The indexes by Maintainer and Distribution pages
• The index by Creation Date page
• The index by Name page
• Package pages
• Resource pages

The navigator header

All the pages generated by rpm2html includes a standard template like this one:

This can be used to move faster from one place in the Web site one of the main pages. Further development will allow site maintainers to link-in extra pages like the help system or a search engine. Here are the standard links:

• Index brings you back to the rpm2html database main page.
• RPM sorted by Group is a shortcut to the Group page, listing all the categories for which RPMs are available.
• RPM sorted by Distribution is a shortcut to the Distribution page, listing all the distributions for which RPMs are available.
• RPM sorted by Vendor is a shortcut to the Vendor page, listing all the vendor or packagers who provided the RPM for the database.
• RPM sorted by Group is a shortcut to the Group page, listing all the categories for which RPMs are available.
• RPM sorted by Nane is a shortcut to the Name page, allowing to search a package using its name.
• RPM sorted by creation date, or RPM sorted by installation date list all the packages available (or installed) on the site, showing the most recent first, this is useful if you're tracking a recently released package

The main page

This page is the front-end of this rpm2html database, it intent is to show what packages are available.

Following a one line summary of the amount of packages indexed, it gives a set of generic links to the main indexes:

• The list of RPM indexed by category
• The list of RPM indexed by date of creation
• The list of RPM indexed by name
• The list of RPM indexed by maintainer
• The list of RPM indexed by distribution

Then all the directories indexed in the base are listed to advertize the available set of packages, their name, the origin server, the local one and a set of mirrors. Important, it also show the associed color code for packages coming from this distribution, e.g.:

The color scheme may be extremely useful is a package is available from various distribution and for different architectures.

The colormap header

Most of the pages listing a set of RPMs also provide a colormap in the header. This is a reminder of the color codes used to help localize the packages pertaining to a given distribution/architecture, for example:

The index by groups pages

This page lists all the groups founds in the set of RPM indexed e.g.:

• Admin
• Administration
• Applications

Each item is a link to the page listing all the RPM packages found in this group. Each group pages includes the navigation header, the colormap header and a list of packages exemple:

All the packages with identical software name, revision number and packaging number are represented by one row in the table. It lists the package name, the summary and a set of links pointing to the packages pages. Note that there may be more than one line per row (i.e. if a package is available in more than one distribution), in that case, use the color indexing to find the appropritate link. The link is labelled with the OperatingSystem/Architecture to avoid using a package for a different architecture.

The indexes by Maintainer and Distribution pages

There are extremely similar to the Group file, they just use the Maintainer and Distribution fields to index the database instead of the Group field. The page and links schemes are quite similar otherwise.

The index by Creation Date page

This page lists all the packages found in the database sorted by creation (or installation) date, the most recent being listed first:

RPMs less than three days old

Each line list exactly one package, the color scheme is used to differentiate packages from various distribution platforms. The first field gives the name, this is also a link to the package page, then there is the summary and the date of creation (or installation). Separators title are used to mark arbitrary times limits at 3 days, one week, two weeks, one month and two months, anything older is not listed. Also to avoid creating too big pages the page may be splitted into multiples pages, using the "..." link at the bottom of the page for the next page.

The index by Name page

This page indexes all packages using their first name (case insensitive!),

RPM sorted by Name

158 Packages beginning with letter A

122 Packages beginning with letter B

162 Packages beginning with letter C

Each line is a link to a page listing all the packages whose name starts with the same letter and sorted by name:

The format of each line is package name, summary and the usual links with the color indicator.

Package pages

The pages described previously are only indexes whose purpose is to locate easily the packages you are actually interested in. Let's look at a package page. It starts with the usual navigation header, then two titles are provided:

netscape-communicator-4.04-3 RPM for i386

From RedHat-5.0 Updates for i386

The first one is a link to the local copy of the package. To load it click on the link while pressing shift (this may depend on your browser though). The second link explains the origin of the package and is usually a link to the repository where the files where fetched (the origin server). Use this link if you don't trust the local repository.

The next item on the page is a table displaying most of the information concerning this RPM package:

The background color again explain the origin of the package. The table tries to list all the important informations like:

• name
• distribution
• group
• build infromations, when, where, who, a link to the sources package is available
• Size
• Summary
• Links to the package home page or the maintainer's.

Usually package have a small readme embedded explaining the purpose of the package and useful information, this is printed next if available

Netscape Communicator is the industry-leading web browser. It supports
the latest HTML standards, Java, and JavaScript. It also includes
full-featured Usenet news reader as well as a complete email client.

Information on the Netscape Communicator license may be found in the file
/usr/doc/netscape-3-3/LICENSE.update.

The two next items in the page are a sets of links to ressources. A ressource is usually a library or a program name, most packages requires others resources for proper installation, for example most programs will requires a C library, this will be listed in the requires list. On the other hand when installing a package, you provides new resources on your system allowing other packages to make use of it (this is especially true with libraries or standard unix programs). Hence each RPM package has a set of requirements for resources and a set of resources it provides:

Provides

• netscape-communicator
• libnullplugin.so
• libjsd.so
• libTrueDoc.so
• gnumalloc.glibc.so

Requires

• libm.so.5
• libdl.so.1
• libc.so.5
• libXt.so.6
• libXpm.so.4
• libXmu.so.6
• libXext.so.6
• libX11.so.6
• libSM.so.6
• libICE.so.6

Each item in both lists is a link to the corresponding package page (see below). Following the links from the Requires section allow to locate the package providing some resources not available on your system, and which may cause the installation of the RPM to abort.

Warning: this package does not export valid resources lists

Try to pick another

Some package are incorectly built and don't export a valid lists of required and exported resources. This banner is here to avoid using incorrect packages but sometimes it may be wrong, some packages just don't requires any other resources. Anyway it's alway better to follow the link to check for more suitable packages, if they exists.

The next item explains the Copyright associated to this program:

Copyright

Commercial

The last item on the package page is a list of all the files that the package will install on the system

Files

/etc/X11/wmconfig/netscape-communicator
/usr/bin/netscape
/usr/bin/netscape-communicator
/usr/doc/netscape-communicator-4.04-3
/usr/doc/netscape-communicator-4.04-3/LICENSE
/usr/doc/netscape-communicator-4.04-3/LICENSE.update
/usr/doc/netscape-communicator-4.04-3/Netscape.ad
/usr/doc/netscape-communicator-4.04-3/README
/usr/lib/netscape
/usr/lib/netscape/bookmark.htm
/usr/lib/netscape/dynfonts
/usr/lib/netscape/dynfonts/libTrueDoc.so
/usr/lib/netscape/gnumalloc.glibc.so
/usr/lib/netscape/java
/usr/lib/netscape/java/classes
...

Resource page

A ressource page list the RPM packages providing this ressource. It displays the usual navigation header, the resource name and a list of all the packages:

RPM resource libdl.so.1

Provided by

As usual, each row gives information on one of the packages, it's name which is also a link to the corresponding package page, the sumary, and the creation (installation) date.

Updated for version rpm2html 0.70

Daniel Veillard, $Id: help.html,v 1.1 1998/02/20 23:59:53 veillard Exp $