[snip] > Now only if there was as nifty a debian tool to make the package system > think that a particular package was installed, without actually having it > installed. Have you tried 'equiv' ?? You can build a dummy package to provide the capability that is required by other packages. I used it to make potato think Perl 5.005 was installed after I installed Perl 5.6 (which doesn't provide the Perl 5.005 as needed by some utilities). KEN