Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 586831
yum groupinstall does not add required groups
Last modified: 2014-01-21 01:17:32 EST
Description of problem: When doing a 'yum groupinstall Desktop' the required groups (e.g. 'X Windows' or 'Fonts' are not installed. The installed packages are thus incomplete, and the 'Desktop' not functional. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. install machine with Base only 2. yum groupinstall Desktop 3. Actual results: installed packages not sufficient for functional Desktop (no X, no fonts,...) Expected results: all packages and groups needed for a functional desktop are installed Additional info: I see the Desktop category in the comps.xml file, but it seems as if yum does ignore it?
What are "required groups", and how would yum groupinstall know they are required?
As 'required' groups I would consider the groups that are listed with 'groupid' in the 'category' of a group. Sorry for the bad phrasing, probably a leftover from early comps.xml days where groups had required packages (<packagereq type="...) and required groups '<groupreq>...'. I see no groupreq at all in the RHEL6beta comps.xml, but there are the categories. Are the categories only used by anaconda?
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux major release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Major release. This request is not yet committed for inclusion.
Yes, groupinstall/etc. operates on groups. I once did a category plugin: http://james.fedorapeople.org/yum/plugins/categories.py ...but it didn't seem like a good idea to have people using that (categories are too heavy weight, in general, to be useful) so it isn't packaged.
Why are categories too heavy? I find the idea to have properly defined groups or categories extremely useful. Having groups that do not pull in the required packages or groups are rather useless. What would be the point of (group-)installing 'Desktop', when that does not pull in the 'X Windows' and 'Fonts'?