Re: weather reporting program in debian

[Nate Duehr <nate@natetech.com>]

Antonio Rodriguez wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 12:32:15AM -0500, Kamaraju Kusumanchi wrote:
>  
>
> > Kevin Mark wrote:
> >
> >    
> >
> > > Hi Kamaraju and Paul,
> > > If its a console program, I'd try 'alien' to convert the package and
> > > install it. What's the worst that can happen?
> > > -Kev
> > >
> > >
> > >      
> > I got the rpm from 
> > http://rpmfind.rediris.es/rpm2html/fedora-os-i386/expect-5.39.0-93.i386.html 
> > and did a alien --to-deb
> >
> > Now If I install this deb file, I am getting the following error, Could 
> > someone tell me what to do.
> >
> > rajulocal@kusumanchi:/home/software/expect$ sudo dpkg --install 
> > expect_5.39.0-94_i386.deb
> > Selecting previously deselected package expect.
> > (Reading database ... 127351 files and directories currently installed.)
> > Unpacking expect (from expect_5.39.0-94_i386.deb) ...
> > dpkg: error processing expect_5.39.0-94_i386.deb (--install):
> > trying to overwrite `/usr/share/man/man1/mkpasswd.1.gz', which is also 
> > in package whois
> >    
>
> I would say you are getting your self in trouble. I don't see why a
> weather program should mess with the password encryption. Better be
> careful what programs you install in your machine.
>  

The original poster got an answer to his problem, but as a follow-up to 
this -- you didn't read the output very carefully before sending him 
your "warning'". 

It wasn't messing with passwords -- it was replacing (or attempting to 
replace) the mkpasswd man page, which while annoying, didn't constitute 
any security risk unless it included bogus instructions.

In addition it was the "expect" automation scripting language, which is 
well-known and has been around for years and years...

His biggest problem was probably that the weather script is just an 
example of how to use expect and therefore confusion about the need to 
install expect to get the weather program.  (Whoever figured that one 
out, kudos... I was thinking when I first read this that perhaps expect 
was a prerequisite for some other program and some website somewhere had 
instructed the original poster to "download all these RPM's and install 
them".

Nate Duehr, nate@natetech.com