howto: speed up clean install updates w/ dependancy problems

[grimmson]

Hello all. Newbie here coming from ubuntu to fedora (interested in rhct). Had a bit or a problem and came up with a make shift solution. I downloaded and installed fedora just fine. My simple logic says after you install, update everything. So I tried. I think a clean install has around 600 - 800 megs of updates. My problem was It appears some updates need to be done in order. So after three hours of downloading, the update process would stall (think hal and cups were the major culprits). When you attemp to run update manager again with only a few packages selected it installs said packages and erases ALL REMAINING PACKAGES, so all 800 mb go down the drain only to redownload and try again. I'm not patitent enough for that. Heres my work around.
1) learn root login and EXIT (for newbs)
2) set up sudo with visudo (do a search for it)
3) create a temp dir (I used /home/grimmson/space/temp)
4) Download all updates (or all you want) using software updater
5) after dependancy problems and BEFORE YOU QUIT software updater copy all rpm's to temp dir
/var/cache/yum/updates/packages are where the updates are held
I used (sudo or root) cp /var/cache/yum/updates/packages /home/grimmson/space/temp/*.*
now you have a copy of all update rpm's you've downloaded.
6) change your repositories (root or) sudo gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
a) copy the [updates] entry from updates to gpgkey and paste below last entry
b) change original [updates] from enabled=1 to enabled=0 so it won't try to download all the updates you've selected
c) change the path of the copy [updates] from #baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/blablabla to #baseurl=/var/cache/yum/updates/packages (aka your hard drive) and make sure enabled=1, save (since you've already checked the gpg's I changed
gpgcheck=1 to 0) quit
7) ls /var/cache/yum/updates/packages if you see a bunch of rpm's when you launch update it will use these, if not sudo cp /home/grimmson/space/temp/*.*(use your temp) /var/cache/yum/updates/packages to move rpm's to updates folder
8) exit root and command line (we don't want two roots floating around)
9) launch software updater and select 1/6 to 1/8th of the updates, install
10) if all goes well everything will be installed and fine, if not try a different set of packages (I had problems with cups and hal, might try them first or last) When you update, It will check dependancies on the net and say its downloading. It's not. Its checking all the files in temp to use them. This part is the speed up.
11) after a few packages are installed and software updater closes, copy all rpm's back to /var/cache/yum/updates/packages and repete (step 7 down) until all packages are installed. I had to be patient, observe whats happening and guess what order to try next.
12) change your repositories (root or) sudo gedit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo back to original. See step six. I didnot erase the new [updates]. I simple disabled it enabled=1 to 0 and reenabled the original so its not used during regular updates.

Like I said I"M A FEDORA NOOB! I have some linux experiance but not a lot. Please add to or advise about these steps. If an admin see's danger in this post because of gross inaccuracy erase it from you server. I won't be offended, it did work for me. If your new please use root and sudo with caution. I made that mistake. while copying space/temp I forgot the temp part and tried to fit 25gigs into a 1.5 gig space, It didn't work. Thank god sudo rm works as well as sudo cp. Thanks guys, Hope this helps.