debian help

Andrew argonaut at softhome.net
Mon Mar 11 11:59:58 PST 2002


> > Eric Eisenhart <eric at eisenhart.com> writes:
> > 
> > > However, I find that when using debian, I never manually
> > > download .deb files...

On Mon, 11 Mar 2002 09:40:12 -0700
"Crawford Rainwater" <crawford.rainwater at itec-co.com> wrote:

> I would recommend running the following before installing
> the packages:

> apt-get update

> Then do the specific packages you wish to install.  This will 
> update the apt-get "package list" with what is current and what
> is not, makes matters more up to date.

> For the error message you got, does it say the package is
> listed and cannot install it at the moment or cannot find it
> period?

There are many Websites out there which offer "unofficial" .debs
for download -- packages which are not hosted on official Debian
servers. If I understand E Frank's post correctly, he's already
pulled a few of these down onto his own machine and now he's
trying to use APT to install them. If the creator of the packages
was really on the ball (no pun, E Frank :) he would provide the
necessary directory structure and support files on his server so
that an APT user could add the appropriate line to his
sources.list and then simply "apt-get install" the packages. But
that's rarely the case with unofficial packages. It may be too
much trouble for an amateur packager making one or two .debs. The
packager just puts a link to the .debs on his Web page and its up
to anyone who wants to use those packages to download them (with
ftp, or shift-click in Netscape) and install them manually.

It's rare to use APT to install a package which has already been
downloaded to your machine (though it can be done). dpkg is the
tool to use for that (see Eric's post). Unfortunately, dpkg
doesn't automatically resolve and install dependencies like APT
does. Now, if I'm wrong in reading E Frank's post, and the
packages in question are "official" ones residing on Debian
servers (or mirrors), then man, you're doing it the hard way.
Here's a primer to help you get APT figured out:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/index.en.html

There's lots more good stuff a few directories up in doc/. One
caveat with the APT HOWTO: though it may seem to be what you're
looking for, don't bother with the stuff in Section 2.2 "How to
use APT locally". That's geared more toward real package
developers who are building lots of packages on their own
machines. It's too involved for just a couple of packages you
pulled off the Web. Use dpkg.

Also, the extremely wonderful -- nay, dare I say almost 
god-like -- folks at O'Reilly have seen fit to bestow upon us a 
terse but quite useful "Package Managers" section in 
_Linux_In_A_Nutshell_. Both RPM and Debian tools are covered.

A.



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