Ah yes, the wonders of Debian.

Tell me, is there some way of operating the package manager where you 
*don't* have to waste hours of your life trying to figure out why it 
refuses to install the package you need?

I've tried several different ways, but I can't get any version of the 
package I want actually installed.

- If I try from KPackage, it downloads a heap of stuff and attempts to 
install it. Half way through, it tries to upgrade "libc6", and bombs out 
with an opaque error. (Some subprocess terminated with exitcode 1.)

- If I try through apt-get, I just get a message to the effect of 
"foo-123 requires bar-456 which won't be installed anyway". Um... so 
install it for me then? What's the problem??

- I can't bring myself to try it with dselect. It's just too painful.

I'm not sure what else to try here... I guess I could invoke dpkg 
directly. That'll be fun. :-/

I always hated this about Debian. There doesn't appear to be a simple 
way to make it do what you want. :-(

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Ah yes, the wonders of Debian.
> 
> Tell me, is there some way of operating the package manager where you 
> *don't* have to waste hours of your life trying to figure out why it 
> refuses to install the package you need?
> 
> I've tried several different ways, but I can't get any version of the 
> package I want actually installed.
> 
> I'm not sure what else to try here...

Hmm. How interesting. If I do

   apt-get install darcs

I get all sorts of fun and games. However, if I do

   apt-get -t stable install darcs

it works perfectly first time. In fact, *everything* works first time. 
So, um, *why* is this not the default?! o_O

/me walks off shaking his head...

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:59:49 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> it works perfectly first time. In fact, *everything* works first time.
> So, um, *why* is this not the default?! o_O

At a guess (as I don't use debian systems), you have more than one repo 
set up and the package exists in more than one place - so the package 
manager doesn't decide for you but requires that you select the repo you 
want to install from?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> it works perfectly first time. In fact, *everything* works first time.
>> So, um, *why* is this not the default?! o_O
> 
> At a guess (as I don't use debian systems), you have more than one repo 
> set up and the package exists in more than one place - so the package 
> manager doesn't decide for you but requires that you select the repo you 
> want to install from?

As another guess, I think KNOPPIX is defaulting to using the "unstable" 
branch rather than the "stable" branch, meaning it picks packages that 
depend on whole new versions of libc and other critical infrastructure.

Telling it to pick the newest package from "stable" seems to make 
everything work beautifully. I wonder why KNOPPIX is set this way?

OTOH... I asked for GHC, and I got version 6.6. That's *years* old 
(current version is 6.10.1 - although note they skip odd-numbered 
versions). Maybe that's why?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On a related note, and I'm sure I could track this down with enough 
googling, but I only spent about 10 minutes on it and didn't find anything 
that looked likely:  Can "apt" use "yum" repositories?  Specifically, if 
there's a repository with software for "open suse", can Ubuntu manage 
packages from that easily?  How about RPM repositories?  Most of the 
third-party repositories I see offer those two.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> On a related note, and I'm sure I could track this down with enough 
> googling, but I only spent about 10 minutes on it and didn't find 
> anything that looked likely:  Can "apt" use "yum" repositories?  
> Specifically, if there's a repository with software for "open suse", can 
> Ubuntu manage packages from that easily?  How about RPM repositories?  
> Most of the third-party repositories I see offer those two.

APT definitely works with RPM (according to Wikipedia).

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:35:20 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> On a related note, and I'm sure I could track this down with enough
> googling, but I only spent about 10 minutes on it and didn't find
> anything that looked likely:  Can "apt" use "yum" repositories? 
> Specifically, if there's a repository with software for "open suse", can
> Ubuntu manage packages from that easily?  How about RPM repositories? 
> Most of the third-party repositories I see offer those two.

I don't think Apt can use RPM repos (which the openSUSE repos would be).  
You can convert packages using alien, which I have done with some 
success, though library names might be different (they were for a video 
converter I was pointed at) so it takes a little work to get the package 
working.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:41:23 +0000, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> Darren New wrote:
>> On a related note, and I'm sure I could track this down with enough
>> googling, but I only spent about 10 minutes on it and didn't find
>> anything that looked likely:  Can "apt" use "yum" repositories?
>> Specifically, if there's a repository with software for "open suse",
>> can Ubuntu manage packages from that easily?  How about RPM
>> repositories? Most of the third-party repositories I see offer those
>> two.
> 
> APT definitely works with RPM (according to Wikipedia).

Seen, this is what happens because I don't use Debian-derived systems. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> APT definitely works with RPM (according to Wikipedia).

I'll investigate more, but I don't know if the fact that something works 
with RPM files means it also works with RPM repositories. I don't know if 
they're the same kind of thing.  (By "works with repositories", I mean 
things like give you the TOC, keep updates updated, etc.)

My sysadmin guru says to use Ubuntu for servers these days, but I've been 
using openSuSE, so ... I need to figure out where to get the packages I use 
in a way that Ubuntu likes.  This is what happens when you start getting 
incompatible competition in Linux releases. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:16:06 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> My sysadmin guru says to use Ubuntu for servers these days

out of curiosity, what are his reasons for that recommendation?

Jim

Post a reply to this message