Skip to main content

Another RPM Guide

Well, ARG certainly is a good abbreviation for this post...

RPMs are special kind of tar archives and they work well enough, but nobody really like to make them because the process is somewhat unforgiving.  The best way to do this is to make your own example and then copy and paste next time you need to do it, or you can turn the whole process into a special script and even generate the SPEC file on the fly with a bunch of echo statements.

Let's say that you have a script called test.sh that you want to install into /usr/local/bin and want to use an RPM for that.

Virtualbox


Software development and RPM tasks are best done on a Virtual Machine, to ensure that you don't accidentally mess up your regular desktop system.  So see first this: http://www.aeronetworks.ca/2014/01/fedora-20-on-virtualbox.html

Tools and Utilities

First do an update and install a few tools:
# yum update -y
# yum install rpm-build gvim system-config-users -y

Build Account

Make a special user account just for making RPMs.  Don't mess up your own home directory.  Run system-config-users and create a new user called rpmguru.

Log out and log in as rpmguru.

RPM Recipe

1. Make a directory called testscript-1 for the script.
$ mkdir testscript-1

2. Copy test.sh into the testscript-1 directory.
$ cp test.sh testscript-1/.

3. Make a tar ball
$ tar -cvzf testscript-1.tar.gz testscript-1

4. Make a spec file with  
$ gvim testscript-1.spec

5. Make the RPM directories
$ rpmbuild testscript-1.spec
(It will fail with “…no such file...”, but will create the ~/rpmbuild directory structure)

6. Copy the script and spec files
$ cp testscript-1.tar.gz rpmbuild/SOURCES/ && cp testscript-1.spec rpmbuild/SPECS/

7. Make the RPM
$ rpmbuild -ba rpmbuild/SPECS/testscript-1.spec

8. Now you can install the file with
# rpm -ivh rpmbuild/RPMS/tetscript[tab]
and see if it worked.

SPEC File

Name:        testscript       
Version:    1   
Release:    1%{?dist}
Summary:    Test script   

Group:        none
License:    GPL
URL:        none
Source0:    %{name}-%{version}.tar.gz   

BuildRequires:    /bin/cp, /bin/rm, /bin/mkdir
Requires:    /bin/bash

%description   
Example RPM, displays Hello World

%prep
%setup -q

%build
echo OK

%install
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT
mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/bin
cp test.sh $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/local/bin/

%clean
rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT

%files
%defattr(-,root,root,-)
%attr(0775,root,root) /usr/local/bin/test.sh

%doc

%changelog
* Fri Feb 21 2014 Herman 1
- Example Hello World script

More

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_create_a_GNU_Hello_RPM_package

La voila!

Herman.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

On topic comments are welcome. Junk will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

OpenEMS with Octave and SciLAB

I wanted to do some advanced RF antenna development work and needed an electromagnetic field solver that is a bit more up to date than NEC2 .  Commercial solvers from Matlab , Ansys and others are hideously expensive (in the order of $20,000 to $50,000) and do not fit in the wallet of a hobbyist or a small consulting company.  Recently, openEMS became available and it fills the niche with a capable free tool.  In general, openEMS is a solver - a Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) numerical engine.  You interact with it through Octave , which is almost identical to Matlab .  You can watch a good video by Thorsten Liebig here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ThMLf0d5gaE   Getting it to work is a little painful, but it is free, so bear with it - then save a backup clone, or a zipped copy of the whole virtual machine directory and NEVER update it, to ensure that it keeps going and doesn't get broken by future updates, right when you are ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parasitic Quadrifilar Helical Antenna

This article was reprinted in OSCAR News, March 2018:  http://www.amsat-uk.org If you want to receive Satellite Weather Pictures , then you need a decent antenna, otherwise you will receive more noise than picture. For polar orbit satellites, one needs an antenna with a mushroom shaped radiation pattern .  It needs to have strong gain towards the horizon where the satellites are distant, less gain upwards where they are close and as little as possible downwards, which would be wasted and a source of noise.  Most satellites are spin stabilized and therefore the antenna also needs circular polarization, otherwise the received signal will flutter as the antennas rotate through nulls. The helical antenna, first proposed by Kraus in 1948, is the natural solution to circular polarized satellite communications.  It is a simple twisted wire - there seems to be nothing to it.  Various papers have been published on helix antennas, so the operation is pretty well ...
3 comments
Read more

Yagi Antenna for 900 MHz ISM Band

I like tinkering with wire antenna designs, since they are simple and cheap to make.  Mr Yagi invented his antenna about 100 years ago, but there are still some things left to learn about it. 900 MHz ISM Band Yagi The 900 MHz ISM band ranges from 902 to 928 MHz.  Covering the whole band with a single Yagi antenna is difficult, since they are inherently narrow band devices.  Consequently some tweaking is required and the result below is a desensitized design that can be built and replicated quite easily, but you need a network analyzer - "To Measure, is to Know!" A Yagi generally consists of a Reflector, Radiator and one or more Director elements, arranged on a boom.  For a small Yagi, a wooden ruler works a treat, since one can easily mark the position of the wires.  The wire elements are fastened to the bottom of the ruler with hot glue.  The wire elements are  made from straightened out jumbo size paper clips.  The balun, is tw...
Post a Comment
Read more