Re: Dummy

[Leo Spalteholz <leo@spalteholz.ca>]

On March 2, 2003 08:03 am, Teilhard Knight wrote:
> > Kent West wrote:
> > > Teilhard Knight wrote:
> > >>> Kent West wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>> But
> > >>> natively, Debian doesn't use the .rpm format
> > >>> (although it can in many cases with the "alien" package).
> > >>
> > >> Thanks a lot, Kent. A friend of mine told me Debian takes Red
> > >> Hat
>
> drivers
>
> > >> and to install it as simply as: rpm -ivh package_name. This
> > >> must be news for
> > >> you, so maybe I, through my friend, am contributing something.
> > >> :o)
> > >
> > > Wow! You're right; I didn't know about the rpm command being on
> > > Debian. But sure enough, it's on my box, and the man page says
> > > indicates that it'll install rpms.
> >
> > The man page is lying.  rpm is there to be used by alien and to
> > build rpms, it can't install packages because the rpm package
> > database doesn't exist.  If you try to create an rpm package
> > database in order to get it to work, don't expect your system to
> > stay unbroken for long.
>
> I guess you are right. I tried today to install as a root using
> rpm, and I got the reply you say: "database doesn't exist". Is
> alien in the distribution of Debian or should I grab it apart? I
> think I'll have a look.

I've never had much luck installing anything with alien.  Unless it's 
something trivial, it will usually be broken in some way after 
install..

Leo