[CentOS] Centos Gotcha: YUM Groupinstall

[Owen Beckley]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of David
> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 9:21 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Centos Gotcha: YUM Groupinstall
> 
> At 07:13 PM 8/16/2011, you wrote:
> >At Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:32:43 -0700 CentOS mailing list
> ><centos at centos.org> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Folks
> > >
> > > I have encountered a situation with YUM that isn't what I
expected.
> > >
> > > Let's suppose I want to install a group, call it G.  My first
> > > question would be -- is the group already installed.  Realize all
> of
> > > this is scripted.
> > >
> > > So, I use
> > >    yum groupinfo
> > > and I see the list of installed groups, and those not yet
> installed.
> > >
> > > If group G is in the list of installed groups, one would think
that
> > > there's no point in issuing a "groupinstall".
> > >
> > > But, to my surprise, a group can be listed as "installed", only to
> > > find that a groupinstall will actually do a lot of installs.
> > >
> > > So, I had to adapt my script to perform a "groupinfo G", parse the
> > > modules, and individually test them to see if they need
> installation.
> > >
> > > I do not understand this behavior -- group G is shown as
> "installed",
> > > but it really isn't.
> >
> >I think what is happening is that some sub-set of group G, probably
to
> >satisfy various dependcies for rpms in group A, B and F (say).
> Elements
> >of Group G have been installed, but not ALL of group G has been
> >installed, and thus group G is *partitically* installed.  In a sense
> >group G is neither uninstalled nor fully installed.  This 'group'
> >business is not 'atomic' as are individual rpms are 'atomic': a
single
> >rpm package is either installed or not installed -- you cannot
> properly
> >install 'part' of an rpm, but you can install 'part' of a group [of
> >rpms].
> >
> > >
> 
> Robert
> 
> Yes, I sort of came to the same conclusion, but couldn't express it
> as elegantly as you did.  Luckily, about 30 lines of  Perl took care
> of it, by converting the module list from groupinfo into individual
> items which I could match against the "yum list installed"
> 

Another thing to consider is that individual RPMs within a group have
different membership types. RPMs can have a type of "default,"
"optional," "mandatory", or "conditional." I don't know if a group is
considered "installed" if only one RPM is installed, or if all of the
"mandatory" RPMs are installed.

When you run "yum groupinstall," it looks to me like you get "mandatory"
and "default" packages, but not "optional."

-Owen