Subject: Using dpkg to install Debian?

From: Barid Bel Medar <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 01:25:49 -0400 (EDT)

Hi there.  I have a couple of questions, the first of which is: is it 
possible to install *components* of Debian without having to totally 
blast away all of the Slackware garbage I have now?  The version I have 
is old enough that it's due upgrading anyway, and I'd like to switch to 
Debian piecemeal 'cause of the package stuff being so much easier.  But I 
don't want to overwrite everything, because I don't want to break the 
stuff I have right now and because I don't want to spend thirty hours on 
the net downloading everything. :)

I assumed that the logical approach would be to download the source to 
dpkg and dpkg-ftp, install them, and then install some of the more 
critical pacakges via ftp.  After *finally* locating dpkg-ftp, I 
recompiled everything on my Slackware machine.  (This might be stupid, I 
don't know.  Does the Debian elf format differ from the Slackware elf 
format?  i.e., did I *have* to recompile, or can I just grab the 
binary-i386 stuff?)  configure ran fine except for one error: it was 
unable to determine my architecture.  Now, this is kind of strange.  When 
I accidentally tried to run it on a sun4c, it claimed an error with dpkg 
on line one of configure (?), looked like a shell error, but on my Linux 
machine it just gave me something about CC not being found.

Anyway, I tried make anyway, which of course didn't work.  But I edited 
config.h and manually set ARCHITECTURE to "i586".  (Should this be 
i386?)  After that, compile worked fine for everything except dselect, 
which died on a bunch of ncurses include files.  After doing some 
symlinking and changing some strange functions to ncurses ones, it 
compiled but wouldn't run.  (It'd run, but nothing happened.  Looks like 
I broke ncurses in the process of getting dselect working.)  Anyway, dpkg 
seems to work mostly fine once I made a /usr/doc/copyrights directory for 
the FSF GPL.

Soo... I tried running dpkg -i on dpkg-ftp_whatever-version-it-is.deb, 
and it gave me the following error:

dpkg: failed to open package into file `/var/lib/dpkg/status' for 
reading: No such file or directory

I'm pretty much a Debian newbie, so I really don't know what I should 
do.  Hell, I don't even know if dpkg -i installs stuff (although the fact 
that it's the same as dpkg --install would seem to imply that), not for 
sure.  I'm running it as root.  Doing a dpkg --update-avail Packages 
works fine (once I figured out that you're supposed to gunzip it... drr) 
and gives me a dselect-like output.

I've been over the FAQ, both the old and the new, at least thirteen times 
and saw nothing of relevance.  Do I need to do a 'touch 
/var/lib/dpkg/status' or something?  What's the file *for*?

Thanks, and I'm sorry this got so long.  I know I'm asking for it by not 
just backing up all the stuff on my hard drive, but downloading 60 
megabytes of software really just isn't an option, and neither is 
spending the money to get Debian on CD-ROM.  (I'm broke.)

------------------------------------------------------------------
Barid Bel Medar                               [email-masked]
Knights of the Cosmos            Shayol Ghul Resort and Health Spa
------------------------------------------------------------------
"I  am  returning  this otherwise good typing paper to you because
someone has printed gibberish all over it and  put  your  name  at
the top." - English Professor, Ohio University
------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: "Susan G. Kleinmann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 05:12:10 -0400

Hi Barid --

> critical pacakges via ftp.  
Well, the better thing to do is to 
-- download boot1440.bin, root.bin, 
base14-1.bin, base14-2.bin, and base14-3.bin (or the 1220 equivalents
if you use a 5.25" floppy) from the buzz-fixed/disks-i386/current/ 
directory, then 
-- copy those files to floppies using rawrite (or dd since
you already have Slackware going), then 
-- boot with the boot floppy, follow directions in the menu
interface to set up a new partition, and it will install a Debian system 
(including dpkg and dpkg-ftp), etc. for you.

> /var/lib/dpkg/status' or something?  What's the file *for*?
(That means we need to fix the FAQ somehow.)
The file /var/lib/dpkg/status keeps track of what you've got on your system.
It has entries like this:
Package: vim
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: editors
Maintainer: D.J. Gregor <[email-masked]>
Version: 3.0-5
Description: VI iMproved - enhanced vi editor
 Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor vi. Only the 'Q'
 command is missing (you don't need it). Many new features have been added:
 multi level undo, command line history, filename completion, block operations,
 etc. See /usr/doc/vim/difference.doc for more information.

The critical line is the "Status" line.  If you were to execute the
command
    dpkg --status vim
you'd see that stanza printed out on your screen.

Hope that's some help.
Susan Kleinmann