Re: wheezy install missing contrib and non-free
> On Mon, May 6, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Default User <hunguponcontent@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I did a fresh install of Debian 7.0.0 (Wheezy), using the debian-7.0.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso.
>
> In the past , during the install process, it would ask if the user wanted to include the contrib and non-free repositiories. Not this time. The install went okay, but only included packages from the main repository.
>
> If I manually added "contrib" and non-free" to /etc/apt/sources.list, and did apt-get update, then apt-get upgrade, would that add the missing contrib and non-free stuff? And would that mess up the already installed system?
On May 6, 2013, at 5:17 PM, Default User wrote
> Thanks for the replies.
>
> I may not actually need any additional packages from contrib or non-free. But I hope I am not missing anything like proprietary hardware drivers, or add-ins required to play proprietary media formats, for example.
>
> I did try to install in expert text mode first, but when it asked which kernel should be installed, I decided to let the install program decide that, so I re-did the install using the default text install mode.
>
> And as for the freeness of Debian: that's why I am using it. I strongly support Debian, EFF, RMS, etc.
>
OK, So the bottom line here is that you only get the question about non-free/contrib in "expert" mode.
It does no harm to add them to your sources.list file after the fact, but you may have missed out on some "recommends" from packages in "main" when you were installing.
If the only thing you are concerned about is non-free firmware blobs, you can:
add non-free and contrib to sources.list
aptitude upgrade && aptitude install firmware-linux-nonfree
and you should be good to go, possibly after re-creating the initrd so as to include the new firmware.
If you want to be sure you got all the recommended packages (including those that are contrib or non-free) you will have to do some command line work to list out all the recommended packages from those you already have installed, and seeing which of those are not installed because they weren't available when their "recommender" packages were being installed. I don't have the problem, myself, so I haven't worked out the magic, but I'd start by reading up on the search syntax for aptitude. Then sort(1) and comm(1) will be useful. I'd guess.
Enjoy!
Rick
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