On Thu, Jan 30, 2025 at 02:22:44PM +0000, Michael wrote: > I installed a debian file (db1'say) using dpkg -i and an executable file > (ex1 say) was created. >
Hi Michael, Can we have some specifics? Version of Debian, name of executables, whether one came from outside main Debian repository, please. As an aside - if you install a random package with dpkg -i, I'm not sure how that might affect the package database if other packages have been installed using apt, for example. Much better to use apt - at this stage of development, dpkg really is *very* low-level and not expected as a normal user-level command. As Tomas has written, Debian is usually fairly careful to make packages work well with each other so that they don't conflict and certainly don't overwrite each others' configuration without serious warnings. > Later another debian file (db2) was installed, overwriting the executable > ex1. > > I now wish to overwrite ex1 with the data in db1, so I tried to install db1 > again, but nothing seemed to happen. > *Exactly* what do you want to do? Can you explain in more detail what you want the end result to be? If you want to install one program, use it to write some data and then want to use another program instead, consider saving off the data to a file and importing that into the second program. "Nothing seemed to happen" - did you use any of the package management tools to check which packages appeared to install and which configuration files were present? > Did nothing happen because db1 had already been installed ? > Without further and better information, nobody can know. If you've got two programs which appear to conflict, it is quite useful to uninstall both of them and purge the config files before trying to install one of them again:. apt remove [packagename1] ; apt purge [packagename1] apt remove [packagename2] ; apt purge [packagename2] > Do I need to completely uninstall db1 by using > > dpkg --purge db1 > > before I can install db1 again and overwrite ex1 with data from db1 ? Yes, possibly, but we need more information. The FAQ for this mailing list requests that people give us details on packages, commands that they've run and output and results for a reason: unfortunately, we can't sit on your shoulder and observe exactly what's going on and what you see :) All the very best, as ever, Andy (amaca...@debian.org)
