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Re: [LUG] Resurrecting Pan

 

Julian Hall wrote:
> Xandros 3.0.1 OCE
> Pan 0.14.2.91
> 
> I tried upgrading Pan from the version above, using a DEB from the Pan
> website.

Yuk! Goes to show just why standard repositories should be used!
Developing the upstream code is only one phase of delivering usable free
software, packaging that code for a specific distribution is a
significant task - often involving conflicting sets of assumptions about
the filesystem hierarchy and architectural differences.

Was that .deb specifically built for Xandros?
Did you consider building pan from source instead?
        (better to have no packaging than faulty packaging.)

>  However it then refused to make any connections to my news
> server.

Configuration problem quite likely. Could be something as simple as a
.conf file installed in a different location.

If you still have both .deb files, run:
$ dpkg -L filename.deb
against each, redirected to one file each. Then diff -u the two files.

If you want to, you can also use 'ar' to unpack each and compare the
diff.gz inside to see the packaging differences but this is probably not
necessary.
http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/116

>  I've checked with Thunderbird and the server itself is
> working fine, so the problem is actually with Pan.  I figured the new
> version was incompatible somehow so I uninstalled it and reinstalled
> the original version, however the problem is still there.

Definitely sounds like a .conf file problem. i.e. sounds like you didn't
*purge* pan when you uninstalled it.

# dpkg purge pan

# apt-get install pan
(i.e. from a standard repository)

For future reference:
1. Always use standard repositories
2. If a package has not been updated in the repos, file a bug report to
find out why. If the maintainer is having problems packaging it, it is
unlikely that any "non-standard" package will install easily.
3. If you create your own .deb files or install packages from outside
the standard repositories, ALWAYS:
        a. PURGE any existing installation of the same package before
                you install.
        b. PURGE the non-standard installation before trying to replace
                it with a version from the standard repo.

Use whatever packaging lint tools your distribution supports. Most .deb
files should raise NO errors with lintian or linda.

(There are problems with amd64 .deb files that have libpopt0-dev as a
dependency. See Bug #374797 )
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=374797


-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/


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