Re: Getting source deb files

[Brian Servis <servis@purdue.edu>]

*- On  4 Oct, Joe Block wrote about "Getting source deb files"
> Hi.
> 
> Where do I find the source deb files for packages in potato?  I'd like to install
> postfix on a slink system, but it wants me to upgrade glibc which I'd rather not
> do.  I'm sure that this is only because the postfix deb file was built on a machine
> with the new glibc, so I'd like to dl the deb and rebuild it for slink and the old
> libraries.
> 
> I don't want to upgrade this machine to potato because I'm going to use it for a
> server and want a stable distribution.
> 
> I could just download it and build it in /usr/local, but I'd prefer to keep everything
> possible under the control of dpkg.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> jpb

Are you using apt?  If not do!

Then add the folling to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb-src ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian potato main contrib non-free

Then cd to some directory like /usr/local/src and issue

apt-get update
apt-get install dpkg-dev 
apt-get --compile source postfix

This will grab the Package file from the Source distribution. Then
install the dpkg-dev package which is needed to build debian packages.
And finally it will download and _attempt_ to compile the postfix
source under the current working directory.  If it succeeds you will
have a shiny new postfix deb in the current directory.  If it fails
look at the error messages.  It usually fails on a missing header file
or some such.  Use the 'Search the Contents' search at the bottom of 
http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages.html to find out which package
contains the missing files. Then 'apt-get install <package>' to install
the missing files. You then need to restart the compile from within the
source directory for postfix, cd into the postfix directory and then
issue the command 

debian/rules binary

and itterate until it completes successfully.  You will see a message
like the following on a successful run:

dpkg-deb: building package `<package>' in `../<package>_<version>_<arch>.deb'.

I have upgrade probably two dozen or more package this way on my slink
box to potato versions.

Have fun,
-- 
Brian Servis
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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