I personally find dselect very confusing. I install all packages
using just dpkg (dselect is a front-end to dpkg). It is actually very
easy. The only thing that is more difficult is in manually dealing
with dependencies between packages.
The simplest thing to do is to identify any packages you want, e.g.,
minicom, ppp, etc. Download your selected packages from any Debian
archive (best to get them from the stable distribution). For the two
I mention above, this would be:
stable/binary-i386/comm/minicom_1.75-1.deb
stable/binary-i386/net/ppp_2.2.0f-2.deb
Once you have them on your Linux box you should check what other
packages they depend on:
$ dpkg --info minicom_1.75-1.deb
This lists various things about the package. Look for a line that
begins with "Depends: "
You can do a "dpkg --list" to see if you have all of the required
packages.
If so, then simply install the new package:
$ dpkg --install minicom_1.75-1.deb
This actually unpacks the package and then configures the package.
If you don't like the package you can simply remove it with:
$ dpkg --purge minicom
It removes all files that were installed and undoes appropriate
configurations.
Hope this helps.
(My Linux box is home at present so I'm working from memory but I've
done this often enough to be pretty sure it's correct. The "--help"
option of dpkg lists all available options.)
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ,--_|\ Tel: (+61 6) 216 7042
Senior Research Scientist, Data Mining / \ Fax: (+61 6) 216 7112
CSIRO Div of Info Tech, Aust Nat Univ \_.--_*/ GPO Box 664 Canberra
<URL:http://www.dit.csiro.au/~gjw> v ACT 2601 Australia
