This article discusses some of the workings of open source software with particular reference to the Linux kernel and GNU. It will explain some of the processes involved for those of us who know Linux but are not software engineers. Perhaps you are an Linux administrator or enthusiast, but find yourself unsure of terms such as upstream, downstream, mainline, patch, merge and other words developers love to bandy ? Read on.
Open Source Software
If you are a Linux user, you might be familiar with installing software using yum or apt-get. For example Continue reading →
Both will work. A subsequent call to yum will read the http_proxy environment variable and act on it, using the named proxy to obtain a network connection to the relevant repository. I have tested this successfully on Red Hat 5.7.
Older versions of Red Hat 5 are more fussy. RHEL 5.4 will allow the first form above (export http_proxy=http://192.168.1.100:8080), but use the second form and yum will barf extravagantly, leaving you with a lengthy Python trace back. Continue reading →