On Sat, Jul 14, 2001 at 02:54:43PM -0700, der.hans wrote: > Am 14. Jul, 2001 schw?zte Joost Kooij so: > > > Try to run update again from the dselect menu. If you keep having > > problems with the integrity of the /var/lib/dpkg/available file, please > > post again. > > I don't think he can. I think this is the case where debian has no net > access, but can get stuff off another filesystem via duel-boot with an OS > that does have net access. > > While it would seem good to give debian net access :), he apparently can't > for some reason.
Before ubiquitous net access became a commodity, debian worked just fine. Why else do you think that there still is a dpkg-split utility in the dpkg package? Admittedly, I wouldn't want to go back and dselect and apt are great improvements, but you can still manage a debian system without them. It's just a bit more harsh. Without dselect and/or apt, you'll quickly be experienced in sed and awk. Maybe that is in fact the only way to really appreciate what the high level tools can do. > So, now we know dselect needs /var/lib/dpkg/available. Is that simply a file > that's downloaded? Is it something that's built from other files? No, it's part of the dpkg database. You should not be modifying that by hand, unless dpkg itself has broken down. > I think he needs to know how to get the content via ftp or http and then how > to build /var/lib/dpkg/available by hand. Download the Packages file, ungzip it, and use the correct interface: dpkg --update-avail Packages I thought earlier that it could be piped to stdin as well, but it doesn't. > Also, could he just edit the one he has and take out one or both of the > offending entries? Sure, as I said, when dpkg is severely broken, you'll have to. But this is not the case right now, if he can still use "dpkg --update-avail" There is also --merge-avail, which works out slightly differently, but in the case of a database corruption, --update-avail is better, I think. Cheers, Joost
