[svlug] Re: Using RPM

[Dave Zarzycki]

On Sat, 17 Mar 2001, Dagmar d'Surreal wrote:

> > So we agree.  The biggest possible limitation I can think of might be
> > command line length limits if several packages have to be installed at
> > once due to circulular dependencies.
>
> Dear god what kind of horrifying circular dependency could cause the total
> length of the package names to exceed 250 characters?  (*shudder*)

Eh? 250? Old Unix systems, maybe, but not Linux. Here is snippet of linux
kernel source:

/*
 * MAX_ARG_PAGES defines the number of pages allocated for arguments
 * and envelope for the new program. 32 should suffice, this gives
 * a maximum env+arg of 128kB w/4KB pages!
 */
#define MAX_ARG_PAGES 32


I've even heard of some people bumping MAX_ARG_PAGES up to 512 so that
they can have a 2MB command line statement. :-)

Even with the default of 32 pages, it is big enough to:

cd /path/to/latest/rpm/distro/RPMS
rpm -Uvh `ls *.rpm|grep -v kernel`


davez

-- 
Dave Zarzycki
http://thor.sbay.org/~dave/