Re: After potato install, why does 1st dselect install so much?
Quoting Robert Cymbala (cymbaLa@lafn.org):
>
> AFTER SEARCHING through about 18 months of debian-user archives and
> not finding a related thread, here's a question that's been on my mind
> looking for a high-level answer.
I don't know about high-level; I can only make some observations.
> Just now I did a fresh install of potato (2.2r2) from CD and chose
> these tasks:
> [*] Dialup Dialup utilities
> [*] Laptop A selection of tools for laptop users
> [*] Newbie Help New user documentation
> [*] Python Python script development environment
> [*] Python Bundle Full distribution of Python
> [*] Python Dev Full Python development environment
> [*] Python Web Python web application development environm
> [*] Sgml SGML and XML authoring and editing
> [*] Sgml Dev SGML and XML development environment
I don't normally select any tasks, but just move on to the 1st dselect.
> Everything seemed OK, judging from having installed slink/potato about
> a dozen times before (sometimes just for practice).
>
> After a reboot, I launched dselect and:
> - [S]elect
> - upon entering Select screen, pressed ENTER ("- All packages -")
> - [I]nstall
>
> It said:
> ... 65 newly installed; 89.8MB will be used ...
>
> I don't get it. Why does dselect "want" to install so much, whereas
> the operating-system install (from Rescue Disk boot to the "Have Fun!"
> message) did not? The main installation routine didn't install such
> basic packages as ispell and finger, but somehow those two (and 63
> others) were in dselect's "queue" of packages to be installed.
What do you mean by "operating-system install"? If you mean the
part of the installation prior to the reboot, well you wouldn't
expect that part to install much. 89.8MB, let's see, what's that
in floppies, sixty? No, that part of the installation only includes
the packages that are needed to install more packages, i.e. it's a
classic bootstrap process.
Looking back at the size of dselect's appetite in the past, the
figures I have are:
bo 35MB
hamm 45MB
slink 37MB
potato installed August 2000 with May's boot disks, dselect
upgraded 25 and installed 91 packages.
> Running dselect a second time doesn't install or delete anything. Is
> "flushing" dselect a normal part of installing Debian?
Yes, unless you know and specify exactly what you want to apt-get
(which also only satisfies Depends, and does not bother with Recommends
or Suggests). Dselect will give you everything that's Required,
Important or Standard, IIRC.
Cheers,
--
Email: d.wright@open.ac.uk Tel: +44 1908 653 739 Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail: David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
Disclaimer: These addresses are only for reaching me, and do not signify
official stationery. Views expressed here are either my own or plagiarised.
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