Results tagged “Apt” from CLICK

I'm surprised that I forgot how this works: When you install Debian without using a network mirror (either from the first CD of the full set or, my preferred method, with the DVD image), /etc/apt/sources.list is set up with a Debian mirror for security updates. However, there is no entry for the Debian software repositories, and if you want to add applications from a network mirror, you'll need to modify /etc/apt/sources.list accordingly.

One thing I noticed in Lenny is that sudo was included in the default. I can't remember whether or not sudo was part of the default Etch install. I seem to think not. I always add it anyway, and I was happy to see sudo part of the default Debian install (the Xfce desktop version at any rate).

So I had sudo and used visudo to give rootly powers to my user account. This is the way Ubutu works by default, and I've grown quite accustomed to using sudo instead of su to root. OpenBSD also includes sudo in the base install, and I used it there pretty much exclusively.

I needed rsync to make my backup scripts work, and that is one package that Debian doesn't include in the default. When I tried to add it with Aptitude, the system couldn't find it. That was because I installed from CD, didn't pick a network mirror due to some kind of problem on my local network.

I took a look at /etc/apt/sources.list and immediately saw that since I didn't use a network mirror, the system didn't (and probably couldn't) put one in that configuration file.

It's easy enough to remedy the situation. Either become the superuser with su, or use sudo (again my preferred method) and edit /etc/apt/sources.list. My changes to the file are in blue type and my coments are in dark red type:

First open your favorite terminal program and become the superuser:

$ su

enter the root password when prompted. If you're successful, you'll get a # prompt, which is the root prompt:

#

Then edit /etc/apt/sources.list. I'm in Xfce, so I used the Mousepad text editor. Use your favorite editor.

# mousepad /etc/apt/sources.list

Here is the file and my comments and changes:

# use the pound sign before lines you want the system to ignore. I no longer want apt or Aptitude to look for packages on the install CD, so I'm "pounding out" the next line
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.2a _Lenny_ - Official i386 xfce+lxde-CD Binary-1 20090817-01:32]/ lenny main

# I needed to add the next two lines so I could install packages from the Debian repository. The "basic" way to do this is to hit the main repository, but I added contrib and non-free because I sometimes need packages that aren't totally "free" in a free software sense, especially the Java runtime
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free

# The security updates for the main repository were included so all the packages installed by default from the "main" repository are covered; I added contrib and non-free so I would get updates for those packages as well
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

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Now that I had /etc/apt/sources.list configured, I installed rsync with Aptitude, did my backup and went about my business .

Every time I write about wanting to use CentOS — the free clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux &mash; but don't know where to find the many desktop applications not maintained by Red Hat, somebody suggests that I use the Dag Wieers repositories.

I have been looking, and there indeed is quite a bit of software that Mr. Wieers, himself a developer for CentOS, has compiled into RPM packages. Things that aren't easy to find in CentOS, like the video-editing app Cinelerra and the Geany text editor, are right there.

I found it interesting that Wieers suggests Debian's apt package manager on your RH/CentOS system because of the way it handles dependencies.

I had no idea that the Debian-derived apt and Synaptic are viable choices for package management in Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the free RHEL-like CentOS. Not that I have anything against RPM and Yum, but it's nice to have choices.

Dag Wieers shows you how on his blog, which I found via Planet CentOS. (Have you noticed that Planet CentOS is a great place to find out stuff?)

It's all courtesy of a project called APT-RPM.