Apt, dpkg and dselect on non-debian system (RH)

[Piotr Krukowiecki <piotr@pingu.ii.uj.edu.pl>]

Hi

I installed apt (apt-get update && apt-get -d install works ok) on
Red Hat system (when needed, ~ is expanded) 

make startup
make
mkdir ~/local/apt
mv build/bin ~/local/apt
mkdir ~/local/apt/cache
mkdir -p ~/local/apt/archives/partial
mkdir -p ~/local/apt/lists/partial
mkdir ~/local/apt/etc
touch ~/local/apt/cache/srcpkgcache.bin
touch ~/local/apt/cache/pkgcache.bin

File ~/local/apt/etc/apt.conf:
APT
 {
   Architecture "i386";
   Get::Download-Only "true";
 };
 Dir
 {
   State "~/local/apt/";
   State::status "status";
   Cache
   {
     archives "~/local/apt/archives/";
     srcpkgcache "~/local/apt/cache/srcpkgcache.bin";
     pkgcache "~/local/apt/cache/pkgcache.bin";
   }
   Etc "~/local/apt/etc/";
   bin::Methods "~/local/apt/bin/methods" ;
 };

These shell variables are set:
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/local/apt/bin
APT_CONFIG="~/local/apt/etc/apt.conf"



Now installing dpkg:
./configure --prefix=~/local/dpkg --with-dselect
make
make install
mkdir ~/local/apt/updates
touch ~/local/apt/available

Executing:
~/local/dpkg/bin/dselect --admindir ~/local/apt  # ~/local/apt there
                                                 # are status etc
When entering options:
[A,U]: dselect: unable to read `/usr/local/lib/dpkg/methods/' directory
for reading methods: Permission denied # how to change this ?  
[S] - it's working, but there is less files then there should be.


And how to add apt method of downloading deb's ?



PS.
I don't want to install any debs on RH, i want only to  download them
using apt, and then do sth. with them. I know about apt-zip,apt-move. 
I can't remove redhat and install debian. 
I want to install dselect on that Redhat.


TIA

-- 
Piotrek
irc: #Debian.pl