Re: Synaptic Problem

[Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org>]

On Thu, Oct 03, 2024 at 10:53:30 -0400, Dan Purgert wrote:
> On Oct 03, 2024, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:
> > When I ran linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.4-1 it downloaded:
> > 
> > > [...] $ sudo install brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb
> > > [...]
> 
> Where on earth did you get that command from?
> 
> Last time I installed any of Brother's packages (last year, given file
> timestamps ;) ), the download page came with a full set of instructions.
> As I recall, they should boil down to essentially something like this:
> 
>   1. (sudo) dpkg -i brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb
>   2. (sudo) apt-get update && apt-get -f install

That's the old way, yeah.  It should still work.

The newer way is:

    (sudo) apt-get update
    (sudo) apt-get install ./brscan4-0.4.11-1.amd64.deb

The ./ (or ../ or an absolute path beginning with a slash) is required
so apt-get knows this is a local filename and not a package name or
regular expression matching multiple package names.

This will install the package along with whatever dependencies it requires,
without you needing to put your packaging system into a broken state and
then ask apt-get to try to fix it.