Place Ghantoos

As I needed to minimize yum’s output for a project I was working on, I thought it was just about changing the debugging level. But I found out yum’s debugging level could add information, but not minimize it. So wrote a small python script that does the job.

What I wanted to do, is replace yum’s output with a very simple progress bar showing only the different stages of a yum procedure (dependencies/download/install/remove/update).

The script is quite easy to use:

Usage:
	$ yum-parser.py (-u | --update)
	$ yum-parser.py (-i | --install) package_list
	$ yum-parser.py (-r | --remove) package_list
	$ yum-parser.py (-s | --search) 'regexp'
	$ yum-parser.py (-h | --help) package_list

For a reason I still ignore, when redirecting yum’s generic output to a file (e.g. yum -y install irssi 2>&1 > yumoutput), the “Downloading Packages” part doesn’t appear. To remedy this problem, I had to insert some threading to have a “patience bar” (i.e. back and forth [ = ]) while the downloads are processed.

You can find the source code here.

Let’s take a look at its output.

Install, update or remove

When installing, updating or removing packages, yum-parser’s output will look something like below:

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -i vlc
* Performing install of following package(s) and dependencies: ['vlc']

* Calculationg dependencies.This may take a few minutes. [ =  ]

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -i vlc
* Performing install of following package(s) and dependencies: ['vlc']

* Calculationg dependencies. Done.                              

* This upgrade will install 49, update 0 and remove 0 packages

* Downloading packages. This may take a few minutes. [ =  ]

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -i vlc
* Performing install of following package(s) and dependencies: ['vlc']

* Calculationg dependencies. Done.                              

* This upgrade will install 49, update 0 and remove 0 packages

* Downloading packages. Done.                              

* Starting operations:

[============================>      39%                                     ]

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -i vlc
* Performing install of following package(s) and dependencies: ['vlc']

* Calculationg dependencies. Done.                              

* This upgrade will install 49, update 0 and remove 0 packages

* Downloading packages. Done.                              

* Starting operations:

[==================================100%=====================================]

Install Done.

Of course, when the requested package operation is not possible, the output is handeld as well. For example removing a package that is not installed:

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -r vlc
* Performing remove of following package(s) and dependencies: ['vlc']

* Calculationg dependencies. Done.                           

Requested package(s) is not installed.

Or try to install a package that does not exist:

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -i ghantoos
* Performing install of following package(s) and dependencies: ['ghantoos']

* Calculationg dependencies. Done.                           

Unknown package request.

Search

I find this part quite useful. It was not hard to implement, it does the equivalent of a $ yum list | grep -e ‘regexp’. But it so much more user friendly than a yum search and plus it supports python regexp.

[ghantoos@raoul-centos5 ~]# sudo ./yum-parser.py -s 'irssi|vlc'
* Searching for packages in pattern ['irssi|vlc']
irssi.i386                               0.8.12-1.el5.rf        installed
vlc.i386                                 0.9.2-1.el5.rf         rpmforge
vlc-devel.i386                           0.9.2-1.el5.rf         rpmforge

I hope that you this can be useful to anyone.

Cheers,

Ghantoos