Subject: bash PATH, dselect and ftape

From: [email-masked] (chris beamis)
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 20:54:09 -0700

Hi, as I warned, I have many more questions. Here are the first three:

1. This question is more of a general bash question and if I
shouldn't be posting it here someone let me know and I won't
pester this group about it any more. All the following applies
to the root account, I haven't checked it for an ordinary user yet.

After I modified my root/.bash_profile
and /.bashrc files to include a couple of alias commands dselect
started telling me that I needed /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /sbin
in my PATH when I ran the Install part of it. So added the line:

set PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"

to /root/.bash_profile and /root/.bashrc. In addition, in /etc/profile
is the lines:

PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:."
PS1="\\$ "

export PATH PS1

Now when I say echo $PATH in the login shell I get:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:.

and when I say echo $PATH in shells started with xterm (in shells
started after the first shell in an xsession gets started) I get:

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11

As you can see the PATH in the login shell didn't seem to get the
/usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin or /sbin directories and the PATH in the xterm shell
doesn't have /usr/games in it. I checked and executables in the /usr/games
directory aren't recognized in the xterm shell. One other anomaly I noticed
is that the type size is smaller in the shell started by xterm.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

The next two questions are more debian related.

2. I'm trying to add packages to my installation, among them lyx and
mailcrypt and taper. Dselect complains that lyx needs the package
xforms and mailcrypt needs pgp. However, I have downloaded both of
these packages and told dselect about them. When it asks to

Enter _main_ binary dir

I tell it

/dos/deblin/buzz-fix/i386

Enter _contrib_ binary dir

I tell it

/dos/deblin/contrib/i386

and for Enter _non-free_ binary dir

I tell it

/dos/deblin/non-free/i386.

which is where both the packages.gz and the .deb files reside.

I then tell it to Update and then Select and the list in select
contains the packages I expect to see, including pgp-us.deb and xforms.deb.
However, it doesn't seem to install these and I still get errors telling
me that lyx wants xforms and mailcrypt wants pgp.
It also tells me that taper wants ftape which I don't have (see question 3).

What am I doing wrong with dselect that it won't recognize packages
which I know are there?

3. I can't find ftape anywhere. Does anyone know where to find this?

Thanks in advance.

Chris Beamis

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 96 08:32 EDT

Chris> 1. This question is more of a general bash question and if I
  Chris> shouldn't be posting it here someone let me know and I won't pester
  Chris> this group about it any more. All the following applies to the root
  Chris> account, I haven't checked it for an ordinary user yet.

[lots of stuff deleted]

Read the man pages for bash and xterm (or rxvt) and try to understand what
happens. You can have shells that are not login, they use ~/.bashrc. Every
"normal" (ie non-login) xterm reads this file _unless_ you tell xterm to be
start a login shell via the -ls option. Login shells read ~/.bash_profile.

  Chris> 2. I'm trying to add packages to my installation, among them lyx and
  Chris> mailcrypt and taper. Dselect complains that lyx needs the package
  Chris> xforms and mailcrypt needs pgp. However, I have downloaded both of
  Chris> these packages and told dselect about them. When it asks to

When you tell dselect about the directories, it wants to find the
Packages[.gz] file. You might have noticed the error message when that
failed.

If you only want to install three packages, why don't you just use dpkg -i ?

  Chris> 3. I can't find ftape anywhere. Does anyone know where to find this?

Since around 1.3.72, it is in the kernel sources in the directory
/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/ftape.  Just recompile your kernel (use "make
menuconfig" or "make xconfig" instead of make config).

Hope this helps, Dirk

--
Dirk Eddelb"uttel                             http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd