On Fri, 17 Sep 2010, Les Mikesell wrote: > To: centos at centos.org > From: Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] looking for cool, > post-install things to do on a centos 5.5 system > > On 9/17/2010 1:06 PM, Keith Roberts wrote: >> >>>> i've already added a section on EPEL, just so i can install things >>>> like git. and i know there's an entire page at centos.org on extra >>>> repos. any there that you *particularly* recommend? i'll revisit >>>> that page later today but i'm thinking that, for the sake of this >>>> first-level admin course, EPEL might be sufficient for now. >>> >>> How to identify and work your way out of rpm conflicts. (without using >>> nodeps of course). >> >> How to download, md5sum check, unpack, configure and >> compile a GPL *.tar.gz package. >> >> As SysAdmin that's something they will need to do sooner or >> later :) > > But it's much more important to know all the reasons *not* to do that > except as a last resort. Reasons that someone who has had to maintain > and update such things for decades will know that won't occur to an > inexperienced beginner. You can summarize by saying "yum update is a > lot easier". Of course. But what if they want/need to install a package that is not available in any of the repos? Maybe even just for testing purposes? Keith