How to Force YUM to Exclude Certain Packages

YUM is a package management system for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS, Fedora, and other Red Hat-based Linux operating systems. It is command-line driven and is an easy tool you can use to keep your server updated and install any new software you need.

Normally, when you perform updates, YUM will search the distribution’s online repository and select any newly updated packages for download and installation. These may include everything from Apache web server to the Linux kernel itself.

Most of the time, it is a general good practice to update all of the available packages, but there are times when this may not be ideal. For example, if you know for certain that a new version of a particular package that you have installed will not work with a version of one of your web applications, you may want to delay updating until you have patched your application. Another possible scenario is that you may want to update most of your other packages now but wait until later to update the kernel, which will require a reboot.

YUM has a built-in feature that allows you to exclude a package or group of packages of your choosing. You can either use the exclude function on a long-term basis or for one particular update. To make a long-term change, you should edit your repository file (usually yum.conf). Find the [main] section and add the following line:
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How to Remove Software in Linux

Question: How do I remote software that I installed from my Linux dedicated server?

Answer: The answer to that question depends on how you installed the software in the first place. Once you establish how and where the software has been installed, you can determine how to remove it.

1. Package Manager – Most software should be installed with a package manager like YUM or Apt. If that is the case, you remove it with the normal command for the package manager:

yum remove [packagename]
apt-get remove [packagename]

2. Manual Deb, RPM, etc – If you installed a distribution package manually, you can remove it manually or use your package manager to remove it.

3. Binary Archive – If you were given a tar.gz or similar package with binaries inside, and you unpacked them to a directory, simply remove the directory. If the package had an installer program, try using that to uninstall it.

4. Source – If you compiled the software from source and used “make install” to install it, removing it may be more tricky. If you still have the source files, you can simply run “make uninstall”. Otherwise, you will have to find out where the files were installed and remove. They may be in several directories.

How to install Joomla extensions

Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems (cms), and one feature that people love about it is its free extensibility. Even if you do not have web design or programming experience, you can easily customize your site using pre-designed Joomla templates and extensions.

With a few easy steps, you can install new extensions in Joomla.

1. Visit http://extensions.joomla.org to find the extensions you want.

2. If you have a new Joomla installation, make sure the extension you find has a “1.5 Native” compatibility. Also look for free extensions, unless you want to pay for commercial ones.

3. Click download and save the zip file to your computer.

4. Login to Joomla, go to Extensions, and click Install/Uninstall

5. Click “browse” or “choose file” (depending on your browser) to find the file you downloaded.

6. Click Upload File & Install

If you installed components, they will now appear in the Components menu. All that is left is to configure the new extension and enjoy it.

Fast control panel script installation

As the web hosting industry becomes more competitive, web hosting providers need to provide extra services and features to stand out from the rest. One common service that numerous hosts offer is script installation. Usually managed in the host’s control panel, users can use the service to automatically install content management systems, photo galleries, forums, and other web-based software.

Ideally, script installation should be fast, easy to use, and should be simple and direct, avoiding any hacks that make the installations incompatible with normal installations (in case the user ever needs to move their data to another server). But not all hosts are equal in these areas.

Go Daddy, for example, is a well known and highly advertised host, but their control panel scripts installation is mediocre at best. When a user sets up an installation of a script, Go Daddy’s control panel will queue it and make the user wait an undetermined amount of time before the script is actually installed. It is very slow and can be frustrating to a website owner who purchased an account expecting clean and fast script installation.

How to compile and install software from source in Linux

Ideally everything you ever need for your Linux server will be nicely packaged and easily installed through your distribution’s repositories. At worst you might need to add a third-party repository to download the .rpm or .deb packages that you need. But when you realize the world is not as perfect as that scenario, it might be helpful to know how to compile software from source. Don’t worry, it is easier than it sounds.

To begin you need to make sure your Linux distribution has the necessary libraries (usually -dev or -devel endings) to build software from source. In Redhat-based distros, you need the development tools:

# yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

Next, download the program you want to install. It will typically be compressed in a tar.gz or tar.bz2 archive. You will need to uncompress them:

$ tar xvzf package.tar.gz
or
$ tar xvjf package.tar.bz2
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Installing software on an OpenSolaris server

Continuing with our tour of server operating systems, today we will take a look at Sun Microsystems’ OpenSolaris, the free and open source version of the popular Unix-based Solaris OS. Those who experience with other Unix or Linux servers should find much of OpenSolaris familiar. Nevertheless, there are some key differences.

One of the first things you will want to do with a new OpenSolaris dedicated server would be to install software. The command for installing packages is “pkg”. For example, if you wanted to install mysql, you would type from the command line:

pfexec pkg install SUNWmysql

To install the complete PHP, MySQL, and Apache stack, install the meta package called “amp”.

pfexec pkg install amp

The same command “pkg install” can be used for upgrading packages, and it will automatically upgrade any of the packages dependencies as well. For more information about installing packages in OpenSolaris, see the Sun website.

How to install Shoutcast on a Linux server

Yesterday, we learned about two radio streaming servers available for Linux: Shoutcast and Icecast. Today, you will learn how to install and setup a Shoutcast server. In this example, you will create a special user to run Shoutcast, rather than having it run as root, which is a security risk.

1. Create a new Linux user:

# adduser -c "Shoutcast User" shoutcast
# passwd shoutcast
(enter a password for the new user)

2. Download the latest version of Shoutcast from shoutcast.com. Make sure you download the Linux server version.

3. Login as the shoutcast user
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Useful APT commands

In a previous post, we covered some of the basics of using apt-get to download and install packages for your Linux server. There are several commands that you can append to “apt-get” in order to perform various tasks. Here are a few:

1. “apt-get clean” By default, APT saves a cache of the packages you have downloaded in a directory on your computer. It might be store somewhere like /var/cache/apt/archive. Sometimes a package might be broken when you originally download it. After it is fixed, you would to delete the downloaded package and run apt-get again.

2. ‘”apt-get autoclean” Autoclean will essentially do the same thing as “clean”, but it will only remove the old packages.

3. “apt-get autoremove” APT automatically detects packages that you might have needed for dependencies of packages you no longer have or packages that you might not use, for various reasons. Running “apt-get autoremove” will wipe those packages out. Use it with caution.

4. “apt-get purge” This command needs a qualifier and can be used to delete all traces of a package from your Linux server, including the downloaded archives.

Installing applications with APT

In a previous post, I explained how to install APT on a Linux server that does not have it. In this post, you learn how to use APT on any server that has it installed. Debian and Debian-based distributions, such as Ubuntu, use APT by default. The basic command for APT is “apt-get” in combination with other indicators. For example, if you want to install something, you use “apt-get install”.

To install Apache 2, you would type as root (or preceded by sudo):

apt-get install apache2
(or whatever the name for Apache is in your distribution)

APT uses a cache of repository lists to determine if something is available. Before installing anything, be sure to update the cache:

apt-get update

To remove an application, replace “install” with “remove”:

apt-get remove apache2

Be very careful with APT and keep in mind that any applications you install or uninstall will affect your server and every user account on it.