Installing and using Smart Package Manager

by Rehan Khan — last modified Jan 30, 2009 11:23 AM

— filed under: Post-Install Solutions

Smart Package Manager (aka Smart) is a utility similar to Yum or Yumex. It can be used to install software and upgrade your system. This how-to will cover installing Smart and give a brief introduction to get you going.

Applicable to Fedora Versions

Fedora Core 9+

Requirements

Be able to run simple commands using a terminal

Installing Smart

To install Smart Package Manager do the following:

For the smart GUI:

su -c 'yum -y install smart-gui'

For only the command line utility use:

su -c 'yum -y install smart'

Starting Smart

Smart has multiple interfaces: GTK, command line, a shell to run multiple commands and in 1.2 and above a QT interface:

To run the smart utility from a terminal:

smart <command>

or to get the raised privileges for installs/upgrades you can use:

su -c 'smart <command>'

To enter the smart shell interface (to run multiple commands):

su -c 'smart --shell'

To run the GTK GUI from a terminal:

smart-root --gui

To run the GTK GUI from the desktop:

click on the Smart Package Manager icon in Applications->System Tools->Smart Package Manager

Using the Smart command line tool

Smart is a system application and can make deep changes to your system when installing or upgrading your machine. As such some smart commands will need root access (using the su or su -c command). If you get the message "error: Configuration is in readonly mode" then either another copy of smart was started before and is still running (e.g. the smart gui) or you are not root. Normally it is better to use the su command before using smart command line tool. In addition to prevent selinux from denying certain operations it is useful to run the 'setenforce 0' command before using smart and then 'setenforce 1' when you have finished.

Get the latest package database

su -c 'smart update'

or install the smart-update tool:

yum install smart-update or su -c 'smart install smart-update'

and execute (in a terminal):

smart-update

Check the manpage

man smart or info smart

Help on a particular command

smart <command> --help

See if new upgrades are available

su -c 'smart upgrade --check' or su -c 'smart upgrade --check-update'

Upgrade your system to the latest packages

su -c 'smart upgrade'

or to do a full upgrades but make the upgrade happen in small chunks use:

su -c 'smart upgrade --stepped'

Install a package

su -c 'smart install <package name/s>'

Install a package from a url

su -c 'smart install <url>'

Install a package from a local disk

su -c 'smart install </path/to/RPM>'

Re-install a package

su -c 'smart reinstall <package name>'

Remove a package

su -c 'smart remove <package name>'

Find a package

smart search <package name>

Get detailed information about a package

smart info <package name>

Execute queries against the local and repository databases

smart query <query options> <package name>

use smart query --help for a list of options.

Switch Packagekit to use Smart as a backend

This is an optional item.

Install the Packagekit/Smart backend

su -c 'yum -y install PackageKit-smart'

su -c 'smart install PackageKit-smart'

Configure PackageKit to use Smart

Edit the /etc/PackageKit/PackageKit.conf and change the line:

DefaultBackend=yum

DefaultBackend=smart

Common problems and fixes

Only one instance of smart can have read/write access to the configuration and rpm database. This is usually the first instance started. So if you have the gui started and then run terminal commands using smart then you will get an error message. Exit previously started instances of smart.

More Information

Homepage

Development Homepage

Disclaimer

We test this stuff on our own machines, really we do. But you may run into problems, if you do, come to #fedora on irc.freenode.net

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