Re: Aptitude

[Mario Vukelic <mario.vukelic@dantian.org>]

First, please don't start a thread by replying to another thread, even
when changing the subject. It f****s up threading. Mail to
debian-user@lists.debian.org instead

On Fri, 2002-08-23 at 23:33, David Teague wrote:

> 1) I have found documents on apt* in /usr/share/doc/apt, and some man
> pages. What else should I read to learn how to update my system safely?

Good sources are at http://www.debian.org/doc/ . This is a good place to
start IMO http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/

> 2) I do not find aptitude on my Woody system. Should it be there? Do I
> need it? 

You do not exactly need it, but it's a very nice package management tool
both instead of apt-* on the command line and instead of dselect as a
full-screen tool. If it's not installed, 'apt-get install aptitude' is
all you need. It's available for all recent releases:
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=aptitude&searchon=names&subword=1&version=all&release=all
For a X-based tool, you maybe want to try synaptic which is very nice
too. When you use KDE, you can use kpackage too. Note that not all of
those share a common database, esp. IIRC apt and aptitude. I.e., marking
a package for removal in one tool maybe has no effect on an other.


> Clearly I need to use apt in its various incarnations, and first either I
> need set a file /etc/apt/sources.list or to have some apt utility set it.

Everything really needed should have been taken care of during install.
Deb sources are listed here http://www.debian.org/distrib/ftplist ,
simply add what you need. Follow the links. apt-cdrom takes care of CDs.

Kind regards, M.