Re: dselect-help!!!!!!!
At 02:27 PM 12/10/1998 +0000, Frank Gerhardt wrote:
>
>Dear Patrice,
>
>On Tue, 8 Dec 1998 09:43:48 -0500, "Patrice Bertrand"
><pb@sprynet.com> wrote:
>> I have installed Linux on my laptop and i have now to use 'dselect' to
>install X and others packages.
>
>I'm in exactly in the same situation.
Well, not quite; I don't believe Patrice has CD-ROM capability, IIRC. But
enough nit-picking.... :-)
>Installed it last night. I
>have a Laptop with PCMCIA modem too. After the setup program I was
>absolutely lost. I will probably not be able to help you much, but
>maybe we can share our advances.
>
>I installted via the CD. I selected the "secondary controller/first
>drive" and to my surprise it worked (without mounting). But now that
>the minimal system is installed, I can't find access to the CD any
>more. Which /dev should I mount? Unless I figure that out I can't
>proceed with dselect.
I'm not very well-versed with the use of CDs on Linux yet, but I believe it
would be /dev/hdb1 (b = second controller, 1 = first drive on that controller).
>Also, I can't see my fat32 partitions although I selected the
>Win95/Long Filenames option during the install. Where are my other
>partitions?
For both the CD mount and the Fat32 mount, look in /etc/fstab. This file
specifies what file systems to mount on boot-up. For each device to be
mounted, you should have a line; your CD line would look something like:
/dev/hdb1 /cdrom iso9660 defaults 0 0
The /cdrom directory must already exist, and you could call it anything you
want, such as /MyCDDrive or whatever; you can make the directory with the
command
mkdir /cdrom
(of course you'll need to do so when logged in as root).
Your Fat32 partition line would look something like:
/dev/hda1 /WinLose vfat defaults 0 0
Again, the /WinLose directory needs to exist. To mount these devices
manually instead of waiting of the next reboot (and finding out I gave you
the wrong syntax), you can (as root) type the command
mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdb1 /cdrom
(again, I'm not positive about the syntax). This mounts the device at hdb1
to the /cdrom directory using a type of iso9660 (standard CD-ROM type). For
the Windows partition,
mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /WinLose
>> Problem : i can't find my way and i'm stuck with dselect from the beginning.
>
>Me too.
>
>If someone helps I'm willing to write some documentation (or at
>least participate ;-).
When you first start dselect it'll drop you into a help screen. Read that,
then press the spacebar to get to the actual menu of things you can do.
Basically, follow the steps in order (0, then 1, then 2, etc).
0 (Access) let's you specify where the install files are (on CD, at an ftp
site, etc).
1 (Update) allows dselect to go to that location and get the "table of
contents" for what's available. If the files at the specified location get
changed (files moved/renamed, stuff added, removed, etc) since the last
time you did an Update, your dselect won't know about those changes and may
cough up blood next time you try to install something. So it's a good idea
to Update before doing a Select.
2 (Select) lets you decide what packages you want. Go easy here. Do a
couple of simple installs to get a sense of accomplishment. I ignore the
lines that say stuff like "All broken packages" or "All updated packages",
etc. I'm not dselect-literate enough to use those features without throwing
my system into a tail-spin. There's a LOT of packages, so you'll just have
to be patient as you scroll down through the list. However, if there's a
specific package you want, you can search for it by pressing the / key.
(I've found it's easier to use a web browser to browse the available
packages on www.debian.org's site, then come to dselect and search for the
name of the package I want.) For example, to install the joe editor, press
/ then type in joe and hit return. The joe editor should then get
highlighted. To see if it's been installed or purged or whatever, you can
interpret the *'s and +'s and _'s, etc in the left column, or you can look
in the center horizontal line, or you can press v (for verbose), which I
tend to use. If I press v, I can see that joe is "not installed" on my
machine, was marked for "purge" (which means delete the program and any
configuration files associated with it), and is currently marked for
"purge", which means dselect won't do anything with it since it's already
been purged.
You'll also see many packages that are marked for install; however, most of
these have already been installed, so dselect won't try to reinstall them
each time you run dselect. (This threw me the first few times; I tried to
re-mark all the packages marked for installation so they would be marked
"hold", because I didn't want half-a-gazillion packages to download
everytime I wanted to install some small, 3k, package.)
To install joe, I would then press + to mark it for installation. Other
packages you mark for installation may require additional packages, which
may themselves require additional packages. In such a case, dselect will
throw up a help screen saying so, then the next screen will show you what
those dependencies are, and will mark them for installation as necessary.
In most such cases, you can simply accept dselect's recommendation and
press Return to continue. Sometime's it's a little more complex, so like I
say, do something simple the first time or two to get your feet wet.
If you get totally confused and want to back out of making any changes, X
(note capital) should back you out, abandoning any changes you've made.
After marking joe for install, simply press Return to tell Select you're
ready to go back to the main dselect menu.
3 (Install) actually goes to the location specified in step 0 and downloads
the .deb packages. A .deb package not only contains the files that need to
be installed; it also contains the instructions for where to install them
and how to configure them, etc. This step usually configures the package as
well as installs it.
4 (Configure) configures the installed package if for some reason the
configuration failed during the install phase. Sometimes a package won't
configure because it depends on some other package being correctly
configured. Re-running Configure 3 or 4 or 5 times will usually iron out
all the configuration issues. However, I've had problems configuring
emacs20 if tm was marked as install, so there may be times when something
doesn't configure. In such a situation, holler to this list for help.
5 (Remove) removes the packages that have been so marked.
6 (Quit) - this option is INCREDIBLY complex. I've seen three-volume works
in technical bookstores detailing this option. I would give you a short
synopsis, but it's just too rich to be condensed into a quick blurb. Well,
wait, maybe..., yes, the easiest way I can explain this is, that, um, it
quits the program. Yeah, that's the ticket. :-)
Hope this helps.
Kent
> Frank.
>
>
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