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Re: local install with apt-get still producing caches in /var/lib/dpkg/{info,alternatives,info, ...}



In <[🔎] 9ef66fac1002070041q10da895en25d5be9efb4ede41@mail.gmail.com>, Albretch 
Mueller wrote:
>On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 1:05 AM, Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> 
wrote:
>> On Sat,06.Feb.10, 22:37:13, Albretch Mueller wrote:
>>> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> 
wrote:
>>> > On Sat,06.Feb.10, 13:13:33, Albretch Mueller wrote:
>>> >>  How is it being set to beging with if I don't explicitly use dpkg to
>>> >> install packages?
>>> >
>>> > Only dpkg installs packages. APT "just" takes care of resolving
>>> > dependencies and downloading the apropiate .deb files which are then
>>> > passed to dpkg.
>>>
>>>  I see but I can't find out how to change that directory, which is
>>> what I need ;-)
>>
>> What exactly are you trying to achieve? Maybe there is a better way.
>
> Well, as I said, I need to reset the default "/var/lib/dpkg"
>directory to be used by apt-get/dpkg

As Andrei suggests, this is a bad idea.  So, we'd like to attempt to solve 
your real problem without executing this bad plan.

>and the reason why I need to do
>so is because if you are using a liveCD then that directory will
>actually be:
>~
> "<ramdisk>/var/lib/dpkg"
>~
> which eats on your system's resources badly. 

Feel free to mount this from some other read-write location.

> Also dpkg uses those
>folders as kind of caches

They aren't caches.  If you delete them, dpkg will no longer have access to 
the information...

>(as if you were downloading files off a
>network/the Internet), but if you have those files on your local file
>system then that strategy doesn't make much sense

No, dpkg doesn't know how anything about /etc/apt/sources.list.  In fact, it 
has no method *at all* of locating .deb files that aren't passed on the 
command-line.

As such, /var/lib/dpkg is required for dpkg to operate on installed packages.  
If you remove information from there, your package manager will "forget" it.

For a great example, move /var/lib/dpkg/status to some other location (you'll 
want to but it back later) and then try installing the simplest of packages.

> There should be a way to somehow change that directory, without
>poking into the source files

It's unlikely to be useful, but it is already documented in manual section 5, 
page "apt.conf".
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