I have just upgraded the first of my computer to Leap42.2 and then performed all those changes to enable Multimedia. Now everything is working here but I have to upgrade 3 more computers. The process that during the install the computers download many multimedia packages (from opensuse repos), then I have do tell the computer to dowload the same packages from packman to replace the opensuse packages is quite cumbersome. So I thought about the following: Before the install the new repos are configured. Is it possible to include the packman repo there with a higher priority so that the packages get installed from this repo straight away? It would speed things up and requires less download. Cheers Uli
Easy way just do a vendor change
first see your repos
zypper lr -d
note the packman repos number then use the number
zypper dup --from #
where # is the packman repo number
No need to individually down load the proprietary codecs one by one
Thanks gogalthorp but I don’t understand what you mean. I want to have the packman repo in before the install/upgrade that I don’t need to do the vendor change. What you describe looks to me like the vendor change after install. During my upgrade I had approx 300 packages to download from the repos (and approx 2500 from the DVD/USB). from the downloaded files many were e.g. gstreamer packages. After the install with the vendor changes I had again 133 packages which needed to be switched. I thought there should be a possibility to get the packages right from the start from packman.
Oh Since openSUSE is open source only there is no simple way.
You are upgrading and if you are using the USB/DVD method for offline upgrade instead of a fresh install then choose to change your old repos, e.g. Packman here, to be ready for Leap 42.2 at upgrade/install time instead of later. The Opensuse installer will remove all third party repositories by default. But you can check all your third party repos and decide to deactivate them, remove them or to edit them IIRC just from the installer.
All I wanted is a simpler (faster) way of upgrading and it seems the option to include a 3rd party (packman) repository (with higher priority) before the install is not possible. If that would be added it would make the install much simpler. It looks as if that is not possible now but it would be good if that would be added for the future. Anyway thanks to you, gogalthorp and tinylagarto for replying.
It is possible to add repos in new installs and also to manage an upgrade to include it
However, the latter is not really for the novice.
What you can also consider is an in-place upgrade, which involves changing your existing repos to those for 42.2 including 3rd party ones, then you have to force the upgrade and apply the switching all in one step
Thanks caf4926
That would be interesting since I am doing this upgrade several times with any upgrade. Have you got more information about this, e.g. any links? Although not a novice any more after 15 years of using Linux I only know of computing what I have learned by using it.
What you can also consider is an in-place upgrade, which involves changing your existing repos to those for 42.2 including 3rd party ones, then you have to force the upgrade and apply the switching all in one step
I presume you just replace the repositories and use a zypper dup as in Tumbleweed. However here we are paying for the amount we download so it is cheaper to download it once.
You could add the .iso as a source in a installation that you want to upgrade
Disable all the official repos
Adjust the 3rd party repos to the new version
Personally I don’t use zypper
But yast - software management
Here is a post a made some time back
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/493275-My-Upgrade-experience?highlight=upgrade
Only I didn’t use the .iso
which fyi, doesn’t have all the software that the repos do
Well that stuff is a bit of a pain, and it seems to me that eventually there is a bit of way around it, but 3 computers may not be enough to make it a very clear win.
Anyway, what you could eventually do is to use Suse Studio to prepare an appliance that had just what you want, including any multimedia bits and pieces. This enables you to only download the media bits once and that sounds to be what you want. Two slight disadvantages:
i) it takes a bit of effort, and that would be easer to justify if you had a few more computers to do
ii) you can’t do it yet as 42.2 isn’t yet available in Studio and I don’t know when that is scheduled to change. Maybe someone knows (or has an informed guess based on previous releases) will comment?
on the upside If you dId go down that route you’d probably get more uniform base Installs and that may be advantageous.
Thanks caf4926 that is similar to how I have done the upgrade to Tumbleweed on my oldest computer. However this would require a download of more than 16GB for 4 computers instead of only 4GB if I use DVD/USB.
Here I use 4 LEAP computers and I want to get the install/upgrade quickly done. That is why your suggestion, Obscurant, does not help much. I suspect it would take even longer.
My thought is the following (and I have done a lot of installs upgrades since opensuse 9.2 when I started to prefer opensuse to redhat/fedora):
At the beginning of the install/upgrade the 4 main repos are entered (OSS, non-OSS, update and another one I think). It would be good if the guys who set up the install disc would allow that the packman repo is added there as well, best with a higher priority that the multimedia packages are drawn from there instead of from the oss repo (or wherever they are coming from - it could be restricted to the multimedia sectionof or the packman repo). If you read this forum you find that many problems discussed here is that the packages come from the wrong repo for some reason.
Some time ago I made this suggestion at openFATE (https://features.opensuse.org/321121) but so far only one person added his vote. If any of you readers of this thread think that would be a good idea please support this suggestion. Other distros seem to have simpler install of multimedia as well. (I know there are legal requirements, some stricter in some countries than in others but using the packman repo from the install would make it more simple and user friendly).
Cheers
Uli
It is possible to add 3rd party repos at install, so long as you have an active network connection for download, hard wired is best but wifi too can work if you set it up and you can also use the switching in yast as you might in a running system.
You can actually add the DVD installer (whether on DVD or USB) as a repo. Do that first, and then do the update. Zypper seems to recognize that the installer device is local and prefers that to the remote repos when the same package is in both.
Thank you caf4926 and nrickert for your replies. Yes caf4926 my network is hard wired - all goes through gigabit etherenet connections but I am just not sure about the adding of 3rd party repos for the install since the installer deletes all the old repos and only includes the 4 base repos. Is the the possibility to skip this? I haven’t checked this during the install.
From nrickert’s post I take it that if I add all the repos manually including the dvd/usb I could do a
export SOLVER_FLAG_DUP_ALLOW_VENDORCHANGE=0
zypper dup
and it would install from dvd/usb what is still current and the updates from the repos - do I understand this correct? This would solve the problem.
Cheers
ULi
Yes, that should work.
That’s about what I did to get from RC2 to the final release. I had downloaded the DVD installer (and written to a USB) for installation on one system. On other systems, I used zypper dup about as above. And most of what was “downloaded” was actually downloaded from the USB installer rather than from the remote repos.
So maybe I’m mixed up. I thought you were trying to upgrade an existing install?
And I suggested an in place option rather than starting the installer.
And that you could eliminate the need to download all the software again, by adding the .iso for 42.2 as source and manage your current repo URL’s accordingly.
And that it is possible to make sure packages are all switched at this time too.
However, it is still possible to edit the installation for your requirements should you decide to start the installer from boot.
It actually requires some behaviour that might seem negative (such as ignoring/cancelling warnings about dependencies) and continuing to do so until you have applied all the action you know are required. In this respect, as I suggested, it requires a good understanding of how it all works…
I do not think that it matters if it is a new installation or an upgrade (from the install DVD) one.
IMHO.
The OP observes that on installation Amarok (and many othet multimedia packages, but Amarok serves as the example) is installed. Then later, after the system is running, the Packman repo is added and the famous “switch to Packman” is done. This installs Amarok (a better one) again.
The OP wants to avoid to instal Amarok twice within a few hours. His idea being that if the Packman repo is already available at initial install/upgrade and has a high priority, the correct Amarok will be installed from the very beginning. Thus he asks how to add the Packman repo before the software installation starts (and how to give it a higher priority).
Just my interpretation of the problem description because I got the idea that is not clear to all here. I hope the OP feels free to correct me.
Having packman by default may have legal problems in some locations due to patents. Some lawyer would see that as including the patent encumbered codecs in the distro. Thus a lawsuit could be issued. 
Thank you for all your answers, caf4926, hcvv and gogalthorp. hcv your description of what I want is correct. We use opensuse on several computers (private as well as for our little business) since the version 9.2 and most of the times I did an upgrade (only occasionally a new install). Each time it is the same procedure of installing e.g Amarok but also many other packages twice (this time the switch involved 133 packages which were installed twice). If the upgrade would work with packman added before the install (either with a higher (lower number) priority or with the command ‘export SOLVER_FLAG_DUP_ALLOW_VENDORCHANGE=0’ does not matter). THen the whole adding the codecs command (zypper install libxine2-codecs ffmpeg…) and the switching the packages would not be required and hopefully multimedia would work straight after the install.
Some lawyer would see that as including the patent encumbered codecs in the distro. Thus a lawsuit could be issued.
As soon as you install your patent encumbered codecs you would open yourself to a lawsuit in some countries. That means everyone who gets multimedia working this way could be prosecuted. The idea is that you have to add the packman repo yourself before the install/upgrade than the legal situation is no different than when you add this repo after the install. And if you have to add this repo yourself nobody can sue the good guys at opensuse. Cheers Uli
I agree with what you say. Instead of Packman, we could talk about e.g adding the KDE:Extra repo and selecting packages from it before the install was kicked off.
But I do not know about a way to do this. That was why I was watching this thread: curiosity.
You can of course click that you want to change the software selected for install and you then land into YaST > Software Management. I do not know of a way to switch there to Repositories Management.