How to set Smart Package Manager on PCLinuxOS

Smart Package Manger Version 1.2 is available for download from repositories through synaptic on PCLinuxOS 2010 . Smart is not officially used as a package manager on PCLinuxOS. This may be the reason that smart does not work by default once you install it and needs manual tweaking before it works for you and also the version is not upgraded to current 1.3 . 

Synaptic works flawlessly on PCLinuxOS so you do not need smart as an alternate. But as a personal preference to use an alternate package manager I looked into smart and followed  these simple steps to set smart for my PCLinuxOS .

1 : Setting of Mirrors

 Click " Edit" on  smart GUI , locate " Mirrors" and click that to open a new window where you can set your primary and alternate mirrors according to your choice . 

2 : Setting Channels 

Once again click " Edit " on smart GUI , locate " Channels " which will open a new window for setting channels. Everything is set by default, you need to change few things. 

a ) Set the priority  from 0 to 10 both on " rpm-sys " and on the selected mirror " apt-rpm " . This can be achieved by clicking properties button of the above two.

b ) Keep both the above checked and un-check any others.

Now you are all set. Either click the green curved arrow button " update channels" on smart GUI to  synchronize your system with remote repositories or run this command in shell as root

" smart update " 

Smart GUI on version 1.2 apparently freeze but keeps on working in background . Smart needs to be upgraded for which I have put a request on PCLinuxOS forum. Smart GUI is as simple as Synaptic and with little exploration one can find his/her way around it to manage packages on PCLinuxOS . Simple smart commands can be found here .

Once again a clear warning :  PCLinuxOS team does not use smart as an official package manager . 

I like smart because of my personal reasons . If you want to have smart working on your PCLinuxOS the above steps will help you to fix it. But I am not sure there will be any support from PCLinuxOS team in case you run into any problem with smart.

There is an interesting article about smart on PCLinuxOS written by  pinoc 

which is worth reading.

My successful PCLinuxOS 2010 Remaster

PCLInuxOS 2010 has been released and is once again shinning at its best. Mylivecd is the new customized format of previous mklivecd and I wanted to give it a spin to make a remaster of my installed system. Though many report failure with remastering I managed to do it on my second attempt.

Here are the basic rules I followed.

1 : Installed all the needed packages and removed unwanted.

2 : Installed the latest Linux Kernel  2.6.33.3 from synaptic.

3: Fully upgraded my system

4 : Removed the old Kernel.

5 : Installed Wallpapers & Icon themes of my choice.

6 : Ran Bleachbit both as a user and root to clean all unwanted files and junk

7 : Reboot time 

8 : Opened  /etc/fstab as root in leafpad through pcmanfm & commented this line as

 # tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 

 and then rebooted so tempfs would not mount.

9 :  Removed --lzma from remasterme as root in leafpad

mylivecd --md5sum --nodir ^/tmp --lzma --bootloader iso pclinuxos-2010.iso

--lzma makes remastering process painfully slow on my system so I always take it out but Texstar recommends to have it so you can keep it .

10 : Executed command " umount -a " as root 

11 : Executed command " remasterme " as root and the remastering process started and made a new ISO for me.

12 : Burned the newly made ISO  to a blank DVD at 2 X speed and later confirmed the md5sum of the burned DVD with the original ISO, both were exact match .

13 : First attempt on booting the system as Live failed but on the safe boot it successfully got booted on my system.

14 : The screen resolution was not proper and by running the command 

[root@localhost saleem]# nvidia-xconfig   got it fixed for me. Previously it was fixed at 640x480 while the required one is 1024x786 for my monitor but the above command fixed everything. I logged out and upon re login it was proper resolution. 

15 : Headed for the installation process and that went smooth also with no major issues.

Mylivecd has some minor issues which are being fixed but it still works fine as it did for me. I am sure others might have also succeeded in making working remasters now. For further reading please refer to this thread  on PCLinuxOS Forum .