Re: [aclug-L] Debian package management

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Greg House" <ghouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Ok, ignorant question time.  I've only recently started using Debian and
> it's package manager is confusing me.  I can get dselect to work with the
> packages on the CD reasonably well.  Problem is that I can't seem to get it
> to find debs I stick in a directory somewhere.
> 
> This is my sob story:  Debian 2.0.2 shipped with XFree86 3.3.2.3 (or
> something such) and I need the absolute most current (3.3.3.1) to get
> support for the video card I'm using (Diamond Speedstar A50 (AGP)).  I had
> RedHat on this system last week and it got wiped and I decided to use Debian
> instead.

The easiest way to do this is to snag the tgz for your particular
server from www.xfree86.org, place it in /usr/local/bin, and update
/etc/X11/Xserver to use it.

> I install Debian instead of Red Hat, then go searching for debs for XFree86
> 3.3.3.1 at debian.org.  Gee...there aren't any!  How convenient...  Oh wait,
> there's a utility on debian to use rpms, I think I can use the rpms I
> already have...  So I go hunting and find the alian utility, looks great.  I
> find iti on the CD and install it.  Pop in the rpms and it complains that it
> can't install the deb it created from the rpm.  Um...can't tell exactly why,
> very cryptic.

Uh-oh, trouble.

> from xfree86.org and bypass the package manager.  Ugh, don't really like
> that...but I'm getting impatient and so is the guy this system's going to.
> For some reason, I was thinking Debian was using glibc, so I download that
> version.  By that time it's late and I don't want to fight with the zip

Debian does use glibc.

> xfer, so I leave it.  The next night is the ACLUG meeting, where I hear that
> Debian is based on libc6, not glibc.  Great, got the wrong tarballs.  So I

libc6 == glibc2 (aka glibc)

so they're the same.

> dselect is just totally counterintuitive to me for doing something like
> this.  What happened to something simple like "rpm -U <package-file>"?  I

dpkg -i packagename.deb

or

apt-get install packagename

> guess I could use dpkg, but it doesn't appear to have an upgrade package
> option, just remove and install.
> 
> Oh yeah, and the Debian packages have debs for a whole bunch of adjunct
> functions so after weeding out the X servers I don't need, I still have have
> 36 debs that need to be installed.  All of which are probably already
> installed in a previous incarnation.  Do I have to do every one of these one
> at a time?  What a pain.

dpkg -i *.deb

wiill do it :-)

> Oh yeah, if anyone wants deb packages for XFree86 3.3.3.1, they're at
> http://master.debian.org/~vincent/xfree-3.3.3.1/


Get apt.  It really rules!

I think you can find it at
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/slink/main/binary-i386/admin or so.
Maybe base.

John
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