Re: ia32-apt-get on Sid
Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
Dave Witbrodt <dawitbro@sbcglobal.net> writes:
I use Sid, and have been interested in the appearance of the new
ia32-apt-get facility.
I see that ia32-apt-get has its own configuration files in
/etc/ia32-apt
After reading /usr/share/doc/ia32-apt-get/README.Debian, I'm a bit
confused on how this new system works
Sorry, I forgot to update README.Debian when I uploaded version
22. The NEWS file is right about dropping the diversions.
OK, that helps clear up some confusion.
2) When the new packages were first installed, my understanding was
that commands like 'aptitude' and 'apt-get' had been diverted, and
running them would actually run the corresponding 'ia32-apt*' wrapper
instead. Reading NEWS.Debian.gz in /usr/share/doc/ia32-apt-get now
seems to indicate that the diversion scheme has been dropped.
That raises many questions:
Should users be using 'aptitude', or 'ia32-aptitude', or both?
The later.
OK, from now on I will stick with the 'ia32-*' scripts.
They are wrapper scripts, right? It seems like the dependencies force
'aptitude' to be installed, but not 'apt' though.
Should repository servers be listed in
/etc/apt/sources.list
and /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list
or should they be in
/etc/ia32-apt/sources.list
and /etc/ia32-apt/sources.list.d/*.list?
The later.
OK, that's very helpful. The README.Debian file really needs to make
that clear.
3) Do the 'ia32-apt*' wrappers keep their own database file for
installed packages, or do they share the same database with the
primary APT system. For example, I have noticed that 'aptitude' still
correctly shows my automatic dependencies, but running 'ia32-aptitude'
indicates that none of my installed packages are marked as automatic
dependencies.
The database for installed packages is kept by dpkg in
/var/lib/dpkg/status. That remains common for everything. But the
database of available packages is in /var/cache/ia32-apt/ and the
sources files are in /var/lib/ia32-apt/lists and will only bee used by
ia32-*.
I don't use aptitude myself but it looks to me like
/var/lib/apt/extended_states contains informations about automatically
installed packages. With the wrappers
/var/lib/ia32-apt/extended_states is used instead. Does it help to
copy /var/lib/apt/extended_states to /var/lib/ia32-apt/extended_states?
Yes. I copied both files,
/var/lib/{ia32-,}apt/extended_states
to a safe place, then overwrote the version in '/var/lib/ia32-apt' with
the version from '/var/lib/apt'. You should consider providing a
debconf question allowing the admin to copy this file (if desired) the
first time installing the 'ia32-apt-get' package. Even if policy
forbids this, you should mention the issue in README.Debian.
Thank you for the reply. It was very helpful, and I now feel a lot
better about using 'ia32-aptitude' exclusively.
I'm still somewhat confused about the selection of packages available
using 'ia32-apt*'. For example, I don't have 'wine' installed, but I
see that there are packages called 'wine*' and 'ia32-wine*'. Is this
merely because 'wine' is available in both 'amd64' and 'i386' versions
in the repositories, and both packages are made available using the
'ia32-apt*' system? Is this the sort of thing meant to be solved by the
new system -- since the 'i386' and 'amd64' packages are essentially the
same thing?
Thanks again,
Dave W.
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