If the RPM name has noarch in it, it means it does not contain any binary files specific to a particular architecture. If it has i386, s390x, or anything like that, it is almost guaranteed to not run on any architecture other than the one specified. You might get lucky if someone made a mistake and didn't mark something as noarch when they should have, but I wouldn't count it working.
If you don't use RPM to install something, RPM will *not* know about it. So, no surprise there. If you want to install something that SUSE doesn't provide, create a SRPM for it, and build a "binary" RPM from it. Mark Post -----Original Message----- From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Yu Safin Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 6:39 PM To: LINUX-390@VM.MARIST.EDU Subject: Some Doubts Some doubts: (cross posted with the OpenSuSE forum) 1) I am not clear as to why some rpm's are named i386 and some noarch. eg) perl-libwww-perl-5.801-8.noarch.rpm perl-GDTextUtil-0.86-8.i386.rpm I suspect the i386 means Intel but when I install a perl i386 rpm on my Mainframe z890 it works (under Linux). 2) when I install some perl RPM's on my SuSe 9.3 from rpmpam I had no problems. However, when I go into CPAN (perl -MCPAN -e shell), I find that the rpm's for the perl modules are not showing up when I do an "i" on the name (e.g. perl-AnyData-xxx.rpm was installed and then under CPAN, "i AnyData"). is this normal? I am trying to avoid using CPAN because I have been burned before when I install and module that I need to remove later on. CPAN won't allow me. Another problem with CPAN is that I need to do it with me present, I can't just automate the installation of a bunch of RPM's for new servers. Any suggestions will be appreciated. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
