RPM apt

[Eric Eisenhart]

On Sat, Jul 20, 2002 at 07:14:57PM -0700, Mark Street wrote:
> I have been messing with apt for RPM and have a trouble or two with
> packages that have missing dependencies.  For example squirrelmail depends
> on sendmail... but the server runs qmail.  When I run apt it complains and
> tells me to install sendmail to meet the dep.  I have been through the
> config files and man page to find out how to make it ignore the dep for
> sendmail.
> 
> One of those RPM override things with sendmail... If a package complains
> install it anyway... we have a sendmail wrapper....
> 
> Can you do this with apt-get?

The issue really isn't apt; it's the RPM packages.

Or maybe not...

Did you install qmail using RPMs, or did you install by hand?

Is it asking for "sendmail" or "/usr/sbin/sendmail"?  Is it insisting on
any particular version?

My recommendation is to fix it so that /usr/sbin/sendmail is in the rpm
database.  If you were on a Debian box and installed qmail with apt, it
wouldn't be a problem because the quality control standards that the Debian
project has would make sure it had the appropriate things in place to
provide the same thing as sendmail according to the database.  (actually,
the qmail package on Debian provides "mail-transport-agent" which is what
the sendmail package on Debian provides.

Apt, by design, has nothing to "force install despite lack of dependencies";
that's the job of "dpkg" (or on an RPM based system, "rpm"). On a Debian box
if you want that I think there's a set of options to get apt to download the
most appropriate package for you, which you could then force an install on,
but basicaly apt really doesn't like having a system where dependencies
aren't met (according to the database it's using; "./configure ; make all &&
make install" doesn't count) 
-- 
Eric Eisenhart                                  eric-dot-sig at eisenhart.com
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