Re: Why is debian "more of a learning curve" than Redhat???
(i knew that the unhtml package would be a useful thing to install...a
tip for you: don't send html documents to mailing lists. most people
wont even bother reading them. even fewer will make the effort to reply.
if you want to communicate, it's up to you to communicate in a manner
which everyone can read)
On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Markus Lechner wrote:
> The negative points are (if they are negative at all):
> Tons of Packages (that's good);
> Too many Documents and especially too many outdated Documents (no Debian
> Problem - moreover a Linux thing);
> Tons of Bug-Reports to process when having a Problem (good);
> Tons of eMail in the Mailing-Lists (very good);
yep, debian's worst problem is it's success :-). it is huge and getting
quite difficult for newbies to install. we hope that deity will solve
that problem when it is finished. unfortunately, it looks like it wont
be ready in time for our next major release.
> libc5/libc6
what's the problem with libc5 and libc6? they both work in debian.
the current stable release (1.3 aka "bo") is pure libc5, and the
unstable pre-release ("hamm", to be release as Debian 2.0 when it's
ready) is mostly libc6 but libc5 packages still run on it.
> The installation-routine doesn't determine which of the selected
> packages must be installed first. When package y needs package x to be
> installed but the simple alphabetic order of dselect want's to install
> package x first and second is package y - two runs are neccessary. If
> this happens with many packages at one time - big trouble may occur...
the usual cycle with dselect is:
1. Update
2. Select
3. Install
4. Configure
5. repeat steps 3 & 4 until there are no problems reported
6. Remove (optional)
7. Quit.
> Is the output of dselect logged somewhere? This woud help much,
> because most of the errors are not even readable when hushing over the
> screen.
no, not with the standard "mounted" method. they should be logged. but
they aren't.
there is another install method called "mountable" which logs everything
to /var/log/dpkg-mountable.
dpkg-mountable has several other advantages too (e.g. much faster that
"mounted"), so it's worth installing. you can find it in the admin/
subdirectory of the debian archive (or just install it with dselect).
if you're using the ftp method to install/upgrade debian then dpkg-mountable
won't be any use to you at all.
> At least, the benefits of .deb are a bad in another way... They make
> the system intransparent for the user.
>
> A year ago, i dealt with slackware. After installing everything - step
> by step - i had a good feeling for the system, just _because_ i wrote
> almost every config-file by myself. So i learned to know the system
> (step by step - from easy to complex). dselect puts everything where
> it should be, but doesn't tell the user anything of it's actions.
you can do it this way with debian too if you want to. install the
package and then read the docs and edit the config file. many packages
have to be configured this way.
some packages also have easy to use configure scripts. sendmail, apache,
and bind are the most obvious examples. there has been a lot of hard
work put into the config scripts for those packages... and it shows,
they really are excellent.
but you don't have to use those config scripts if you don't want to.
there's nothing stopping you from doing it the old way. or even using
the scripts to generate you a working config and then making changes
with vi (or whatever your favourity text editor is).
> At least the package-descriptions should contain some info about all
> the installed files (their names and their destination-paths).
the package system does contain a complete listing of all files
belonging to a package. you can list it at any time by typing "dpkg -L
packagename".
for example:
$ dpkg -L unhtml
/.
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/unhtml
/usr/doc
/usr/doc/unhtml
/usr/doc/unhtml/copyright
/usr/doc/unhtml/README.debian
/usr/doc/unhtml/buildinfo.Debian
/usr/doc/unhtml/README
/usr/doc/unhtml/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/man
/usr/man/man1
/usr/man/man1/unhtml.1.gz
also, you can get status information about a package with "dpkg -s"
$ dpkg -s unhtml
Package: unhtml
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: web
Installed-Size: 20
Maintainer: Paul Seelig <pseelig@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
Version: 2.1-4
Depends: libc6
Description: Removing the tags from a HTML file
This program removes all HTML tags from a HTML file and directs it's output
to stdout. It can be used as a filter for getting the text content of a HTML
file without the need of firing up a web browser.
craig
--
craig sanders
--
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