Re: dpkg -l does not report all packages?

[Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com>]

Colin Watson wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 07:47:51PM -0400, Rick Pasotto wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 03:53:35PM -0700, Erik Steffl wrote:
> > > Colin Watson wrote:
> > > > 'apt-get update' doesn't update dpkg's available file. Use 'dselect
> > > > update' instead, which does 'apt-get update' and then merges it with
> > > > dpkg's records.
> > > >
> > > > Also, 'dpkg -l' looks in dpkg's status file, which doesn't necessarily
> > > > record all uninstalled packages unless you use dselect on a regular
> > > > basis. It'll record installed packages reliably, though.
> > >
> > >   thanks for explanation,
> > >
> > >   is there any way to have correct info about system (installed and
> > > available packages and their status) without using deselect?
> >
> > After reading the above I ran 'dselect update' and found that it works
> > just like 'apt-get update' and doesn't go into the normal dselect
> > program.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> As far as 'dpkg -l' output goes, I don't think anything else necessarily
> updates the status file with uninstalled packages. It's not impossible
> that dselect might stop doing this in the future, in fact (not that I'm
> a dpkg developer), since having a huge status file slows things down a
> lot. There are lots of other tools to look at available but not
> installed packages, though - you could munge the output of 'dpkg -p
> <package>' or grep-available.

  grep available gave me same incomplete information (same as dpkg -l,
some packages are not listed)

  dpkg -p does not accept wildchars so it does not tell me which
packages are available, in addition to that it also only has information
about the same packages dpkg -l and grep-available has.

  example:

dpkg -p kernel-source-2.4.8
Package `kernel-source-2.4.8' is not available.

Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.


  --info and --contents only give information about specific package
file (*.deb).

  apt-cache search seems to be a little bit better:

jojda:~>apt-cache search kernel-source
kernel-source-2.2.19 - Linux kernel source for version 2.2.19
kernel-source-2.4.8 - Linux kernel source for version 2.4.8
kernel-source-2.4.9 - Linux kernel source for version 2.4.9
kernel-source-2.4.9-ia64 - Linux kernel source for version 2.4.9 on
IA-64
freeswan - IPSEC utilities for FreeSWan
kernel-source-2.4.5 - Linux kernel source for version 2.4.5

  not sure why other kernel-source-* versions are not listed...

  anybody has more detailed explanation, or even solution?

  TIA

	erik