yes, i've read the online docs and followed a link or two to find a simple way to do this, such as: http://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/SystemTapOnCentOS so, these days, is that the canonical way to download source rpms? now, note that i'm not arguing about whether this is a good idea. in my circumstances, i want the ability to just "yum download" source rpms so that i can have my students poke around in a source rpm and learn how to build one, nothing more. so, is that reasonable? to just manually add an extra repo file according to that link above (which appears to work perfectly well). frankly, the wiki page on downloading from source: http://wiki.centos.org/PackageManagement/SourceInstalls seems just a touch on the hysterical side. i don't disagree that installing packages from the source rpm is probably a questionable idea. but that doesn't justify simply not explaining how to do it easily. my plan is to install yum-utils to get yumdownloader, add the repo file suggested above, then have students: $ yumdownloader --source <package> so they can examine the source of some packages. is the approach i'm suggesting reasonable? thanks. rday -- ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA http://crashcourse.ca Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday LinkedIn: http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday ========================================================================