PQ2FADS-ZU kernel 2.4.26 dpkg help

["KokHow Teh" <KokHow.Teh@marconi.com>]

Hi;
      I am running kernel 2.4.26 with debian distribution on PQ2FADS-ZU. I
tried to download and install some packages from ftp sources but after the
download, apt-get failed somehow:

PQ2FADS-ZU:~# apt-get install alien
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  binutils debconf-utils debhelper dpkg-dev file gettext gettext-base html2text intltool-debian libbz2-1.0 libc6 libdb3
    libpopt0 librpm4 make patch po-debconf rpm
    Suggested packages:
      bzip2 lsb-rpm lintian binutils-doc dh-make gnupg debian-keyring cvs gettext-doc libbz2-dev locales glibc-doc ed
      Recommended packages:
        c-compiler curl wget lynx libmail-sendmail-perl libcompress-zlib-perl
        The following NEW packages will be installed:
          alien binutils debconf-utils debhelper dpkg-dev file gettext gettext-base html2text intltool-debian libbz2-1.0 libpopt0
            librpm4 make patch po-debconf rpm
            The following packages will be upgraded:
              libc6 libdb3
              2 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 0 to remove and 71 not upgraded.
              Need to get 11.1MB of archives.
              After unpacking 20.7MB of additional disk space will be used.
              Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
              Get:1 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main libc6 2.3.2.ds1-22 [4232kB]
              Get:2 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main libpopt0 1.7-5 [32.5kB]
              Get:3 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main libdb3 3.2.9-22 [247kB]
              Get:4 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main binutils 2.15-6 [2333kB]
              Get:5 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main patch 2.5.9-2 [99.8kB]
              Get:6 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main make 3.80-9 [437kB]
              Get:7 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main dpkg-dev 1.10.28 [166kB]
              Get:8 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main file 4.12-1 [30.5kB]
              Get:9 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main gettext-base 0.14.4-2 [102kB]
              Get:10 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main libbz2-1.0 1.0.2-7 [42.6kB]
              Get:11 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main html2text 1.3.2a-2 [93.6kB]
              Get:12 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main debconf-utils 1.4.30.13 [33.0kB]
              Get:13 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main gettext 0.14.4-2 [1760kB]
              Get:14 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main intltool-debian 0.30+20040213 [23.5kB]
              Get:15 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main po-debconf 0.8.23 [78.0kB]
              Get:16 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main debhelper 4.2.32 [362kB]
              Get:17 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main librpm4 4.0.4-31 [387kB]
              Get:18 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main rpm 4.0.4-31 [526kB]
              Get:19 ftp://ftp.au.debian.org stable/main alien 8.52 [115kB]
              Fetched 11.1MB in 7m55s (23.3kB/s)
              E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg exited unexpectedly
              PQ2FADS-ZU:~# dpkg -i alien
              Killed
              PQ2FADS-ZU:~# echo $ARCH

              PQ2FADS-ZU:~# uname -a
              Linux PQ2FADS-ZU 2.4.26 #62 Wed Dec 14 16:00:08 MYT 2005 ppc GNU/Linux
              PQ2FADS-ZU:~#


      Any insight and advice is appreciated.

      One fundamental question, are all linux application packages (.rpm or
.deb) kernel-version independant?

      Thanks.

Regards,
TEH
Does apt-get automaticall checks the currently running kernel version and
download/upgrade the