Question regarding repositories and their priorities

Hi,

Still very new here, barely been a week. It’s been surprisingly good so far, just a few questions regarding repositories. So, since I installed all the multimedia codecs through opi using the Packman repository, it has gotten a raised priority of 90, while all the official repositories are at the default 99.

Because of this all software is first queried from the Packman repo. For instance if I want to install gnome-calendar, by default zypper offers to install it from the Packman repo, even though a version of the package is also available for install in the Tumbleweed-Oss repo.

So in such a situation is it better to force install the package from the Oss repo or is it better to alter Packman’s priority to 99?

lxhome@localhost:~> zypper lr -P -d
# | Alias               | Name                     | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                                                 | Service
--+---------------------+--------------------------+---------+-----------+---------+----------+--------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
2 | packman             | Packman                  | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   90     | rpm-md | https://ftp.fau.de/packman//suse/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/                               | 
1 | openSUSE-20240505-0 | openSUSE-20240505-0      | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | rpm-md | hd:/?device=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-SanDisk_Cruzer_Blade_03001422030323165219-0:0-part2 | 
3 | repo-debug          | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-De-> | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | N/A    | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/tumbleweed/repo/oss/                             | 
4 | repo-non-oss        | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-No-> | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/                               | 
5 | repo-openh264       | Open H.264 Codec (open-> | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://codecs.opensuse.org/openh264/openSUSE_Tumbleweed                             | 
6 | repo-oss            | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss  | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/repo/oss/                                   | 
7 | repo-source         | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-So-> | No      | ----      | ----    |   99     | N/A    | http://download.opensuse.org/source/tumbleweed/repo/oss/                            | 
8 | repo-update         | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Up-> | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/tumbleweed/                                     | 
lxhome@localhost:~> 

Thanks!

As a general rule it is best to leave the Packman repo at priority 90 to ensure that you have all codecs and related libraries from Packman and not a mix and match that may cause troubles.
Remember that you can also install the “Packman Essentials” repo if you just want the codecs from that and not, for instance, Gnome stuff.
Or you can force install from the oss repo by choosing the “Version” in YaST Software or via

zypper install --from repo-oss <name of package>

if you like to.
And, by the way, WELCOME to openSUSE and to these Forums!

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Thanks so much for your suggestions and welcoming me to openSUSE, appreciate it!
So, now that I already have all the codecs from the Packman repo, if I were to replace it and in its place add the Packman Essentials repo, could it lead to version problems?

Also, I believe I am doing something wrong:

lxhome@localhost:~> sudo zypper install --from openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss gnome-calendar
[sudo] password for root: 
Retrieving repository 'Packman' metadata .......................................................................................................................................................[done]
Building repository 'Packman' cache ............................................................................................................................................................[done]
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...

The following 7 NEW packages are going to be installed:
  gnome-calendar gnome-shell-search-provider-gnome-calendar libbacktrace0 libedataserverui4-1_0-0 libjavascriptcoregtk-6_0-1 libwebkitgtk-6_0-4 webkitgtk-6_0-injected-bundles

7 new packages to install.
Overall download size: 32.6 MiB. Already cached: 0 B. After the operation, additional 110.6 MiB will be used.

Backend:  classic_rpmtrans
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): n

as you can see zypper is still retrieving the package from the Packman repo?

No, I cannot see it. Where do you see it?

No, I don’t see that. I see that zypper is just refreshing the data from Packman before doing the actual search for the packages to be installed.
And no, replacing Packman with Packman Essentials will not cause conflicts since the packages are the same, just a subset.

Oh ok, thanks for explaining that. I thought zypper for retrieving Packman because that’s where it was going to install the package from. I understand now, it is just refreshing Packman and not any other repo because those are up to date.
Thanks again!

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I think you are confused by the difference between “Repositories” and “Vendors”. If you have Packman or Packman essentials does not matter with respect to Vendor. It is still the vendor h ttp://packman.links2linux.de.
Likewise it does not matter if the repo is OSS or OSS Update (that last one BTW almost not used in Tumbleweed, but very important in Leap), because for all is the vendor openSUSE.

Priority is about repositories and decides from which repo a package is installed on first installation if available on more then one repo. After that vendor stickiness decides that only newer versions are installed for that package from the same vendor (and priority has no saying there anymore).

And, as said, Packman Essentials repo is only a subset of Packman repo. It was “invented” for those with slow network connections: smaller repo > faster refresh.

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Ok, it’s much more clear now. I did know the difference between Vendor and Repositories, I thought it meant the same thing. Now I understand, thanks. And also thanks for talking about “vendor stickiness”. It makes much more sense now. This level of understanding will help me while installing and updating packages. Much appreciated!

You probably want to remove this CD-ROM/ISO repo by deleting the corresponding file from /etc/zypp/repos.d/ dir. It’s a leftover from the installation.

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Thanks for that, I would’ve never spotted it! I used zypper to remove it though:

zypper rr 1
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