Re: help

[Stephen Early <sde1000@cam.ac.uk>]

On Sun, 18 Feb 1996, Sujay A. D'souza wrote:

> i've been trying to install version 1.0 or 1.1 of Debian Linux (the 
> unstable distribution) . I have problems when de packaging all the deb files 
> >from  most of the directories like admin, net, x11 etc, as i get the error 
> libc5 not present or something like that. The samething happens when i 
> try to install ELF. Thanks in advance.

Before attempting to use the unstable tree I suggest that you subscribe 
to the debian-devel tree and read it for a few days.

To upgrade from version 0.93 to the unstable version, the current 
procedure is to install the ld.so package followed by the libc5 package. 
Installing a new version of dpkg might also be a good idea.

You should ensure that the kernel you are using has ELF binary support in 
it by default - in other words, you mustn't have to load the 'binfmt_elf' 
module at boot time to run ELF binaries.  If you end up with an ELF 
system but a kernel that doesn't support ELF then you will be slightly 
stuck...

Then enter the command 'dpkg --remove libc'. This will fail, as dpkg 
knows that almost all of the currently installed packages depend on libc. 
It will, however, remember that you'd like to remove libc when possible.

Next install the libc4 package from the unstable tree. dpkg should 
automatically remove your old libc package and replace it with this one.

You should now be free to install other packages from the unstable tree.

When Debian-1.1 is released it will include some method of doing this 
automatically. We just haven't finished it yet.

Steve Early
sde1000@cam.ac.uk