'zypper update' vs. Packman repository

Hi,

I’m quite new to openSUSE (though 100% GNU/Linux since 2001). I recently tested a dozen or so of the more “comfortable” distros out there and decided to settle with openSUSE, because I liked it best.

I read through the excellent documentation, bought a few books (and read them too), RTFMed some more, and now I must say I’m quite happy with my choice. There’s only a few quirks left, which I thought best to ask for in this forum.

I’m running 11.3 with the KDE4 desktop. I configured the standard repos (OSS, NON-OSS, updates), plus the Packman and Videolan repos for multimedia stuff.

I explicitly installed some of the “desktop reqs” stuff: flash-player, fetchmsttfonts, ffmpeg, libdvdcss, w32codec-all, etc. Now, when I want to use zypper to update to the latest available packages, I get this:

# zypper update
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

The following package updates will NOT be installed:
  gstreamer-0_10 gstreamer-0_10-plugin-gnomevfs gstreamer-0_10-plugins-base kaffeine 
  libgstapp-0_10-0 libgstinterfaces-0_10-0 libgstreamer-0_10-0 libsndfile mjpegtools taglib 

The following packages are going to be upgraded:
  MozillaFirefox MozillaFirefox-translations-common mozilla-js192 mozilla-xulrunner192 
  mozilla-xulrunner192-gnome mozilla-xulrunner192-translations-common 

I experimented a little bit, and found out that I can install Packman’s kaffeine package by explicitly updating to its specific version (vendor and all). But isn’t there a way to just force vendor change here? ‘man zypper’ gave me no info on how to simply update to the highest available version, whoever the vendor may be.

How do you guys go about that?

Cheers from the sunny South of France.

I’ll answer that myself, since I just stumbled over the solution. I tried the same thing with YaST, and there’s an option “Replace system packages with Packman repo packages”. Now I’d be curious to know if there’s a zypper equivalent to that.

Yes:

zypper dup -r $alias_or_number_of_repo

One more hint: you shouldn’t mix Videolan and Packman, as they are partly incompatible. Packman offers more (and better) packages, Videolan is not needed.

kikiinovak,
Welcome to OpenSuse & its forum!
Just wanted to add a +1 to gropiuskalle about the Videolan repos, now that you switched to Packman remove the VLC repos.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

I followed your advice, worked like a charm. I also disabled the Videolan repo. Now I wonder how to find out about any remaining - and possibly conflicting - packages from that repo.

With CentOS/Fedora, I would do ‘yum list extras’, which would give me the list of every installed package that’s not included in any of the actually configured repos. I wonder if there is any zypper equivalent for this.

Cheers.

I don’t know

But: zypper verify
will confirm your packages are good/OK

If you applied the switch to Packman as in the guide:
Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide
It will switch VLC stuff to Packman which is what you want.

If you view in Software Manager (QT UI)
You can clearly see packages with Red text, if you examine them, orphaned packages will have now provider in the version view
You see this: ImageBam - Fast, Free Image Hosting and Photo Sharing
In a orphaned package, there would be just the package version but no radio buttons with repo options.

On a good install where only libdvdcss has been installed from VLC and the VLC repo has been removed, libdvdcss will be red and have no providers. Nevertheless, you do want it installed.
Chances are you will not have many other than libdvdcss

Now I wonder how to find out about any remaining - and possibly conflicting - packages from that repo.

I am quite sure that there will be no remaining packages when you did the ‘zypper dup -r $alias_or_number_of_repo’-switch (except libdvdcss2). However, you can grep packages not provided by an activated repo quite easily:

zypper se -si | grep -i 'system packages'

I don’t know whether zypper itself provides an option for searching those packages.