Well, if you use eComStation 2.2 beta II, then the Netlabs RPM environment is already installed and configured, so that is merely of running an update followed by a command to install all the needed packages, which (the command) is very likely just to be present in the readme file as it is.
RPM/YUM is only installed if you let it install it. If it is installed it is important to make sure that you always do updates that way, when possible. It is also important to be aware if you used some other method to install something that gets added to RPM/YUM, you need to remove the original install before using RPM/YUM to install it.
The other way to install RPM/YUM is to use the available WarpIn installer. If you do that, it is very important to UNINSTALL the WarpIn installer, using WarpIn, after you do the YUM part of the install. That removes the YUM console, which is only good for doing the initial RPM/YUM install. If you attempt to use the console after that, you will be using the down level code that was used to get the initial install done. You must use a normal command line to run the proper YUM stuff. As I noted above, you MUST manage what gets installed, and it is necessary to remove all down level duplicate files, or you will end up trying to use down level code, which will cause problems. It is not necessary for those files to be in LIBPATH for some program to attempt to use them.
@Doug: thanks for updating my (and others) knowledge. I am eagerly awaiting a more user friendly rpm-yum scheme. Just hope it is as nice as Warpin in terms of providing an overview of the changes that has taken place on a system.
Unfortunately, the package manager (currently called Yumie) needs to use YUM. All it does is put a GUI front end on it. Yumie is working well (and yes, the overview is quite good), but gets into a lot of trouble when YUM itself screws up (which it does, far too often). If the maintainers of RPM/YUM can keep their act together, Yumie should make using RPM/YUM a LOT easier (when it screws up, the user will probably need help to recover, but that is true when using RPM/YUM anyway). It is also planned to use Yumie as a front end to WarpIn, so the user will have a common interface to work with. That part is still under development.
Why do we need a WAN connection to install something that should be installable from a CD/DVD or USB stick?
You don't. Apparently, there is a way to make your own repository (which could be on a LAN, or on local/removable media), and use that. It does take some work to do it, but it shouldn't be too difficult once you figure out how (TIP: it is a RPM or YUM command - sorry I haven't figured it out yet).