Re: Cannot install hamm by ftp method.
On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > Use debian as the Debian directory, and these distributions:
> > dists/unstable/main dists/unstable/contrib dists/unstable/non-free
>
> OK, now I'm confused. Does this work differently than using
> /pub/debian/dists/unstable as the Debian directory and using
> "main contrib non-free" as the distributions?
If you are using dpkg-ftp: yes, there is a difference. I am no expert at
all, but I think it goes like this:
1. You select a [new|upgdated] package to install in dselect (say, bash).
2. dpkg-ftp searches the Packages.* files that go with the distributions
you want to install for the newest version it can find with that name.[1]
3. It finds the bash package, and this line:
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/base/bash_2.01-3.deb
4. Now, it tries to fetch this file with the name being relative to the
'Debian' directory.
So, if you have selected /pub/debian/dists/unstable to be the top
directory, it will look for
/pub/debian/dists/unstable/dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/base/bash_2.01-3.deb
which obviously doesn't exist.
This 'problem' exists for unstable only, stable is just fine. And I'm not
saying I want it to be changed. I found it out myself, by looking at the
Packages.gz file in unstable. And that's good. One should be able to
install from unstable, but it shouldn't be too easy for first-time users.
Remco
[1] This behaviour is very different from that of dselect. If you have
selected 'stable dists/unstable/main' as the distributions to install and
the package in stable has a higher version number than the package in
unstable, dselect will show you the version in unstable (the last one it
has found) and dpkg-ftp will want to install the version from stable (the
highest version number it has found). This has been a problem when libc5
had a higher version number in stable than in unstable and libc5-altdev
had a version dependancy on libc5. Dselect would not 'see' the libc5
version in stable, dpkg-ftp would download libc5 from stable and dpkg
would complain it conflicted with libc5-altdev.
--
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam up my clothes.
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