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On Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:20:53 +0000 Peter Lloyd-Jones <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi > > I am running Ubuntu also (on my Lappy). I have a question about packages and > package management. > > Am I right in thinking there is a file somewhere which contains all the > details. Depends what kind of details you need, /var/lib/dpkg/status, /var/cache/apt/archives/, etc. Try the manpages for dpkg and apt. What are you looking for? > On top of that sits dpkg, on that apt, on that aptitude and in > Ubuntu's case on top of that Add/Remove. Add/Remove calls aptitude, aptitude calls apt, apt calls dpkg, dpkg does the work. (Hence it's quicker to run apt directly.) aptitude provides the information for the display, be it command line or GUI. apt connects to the remote repository and gets the .deb file and handles dependencies. dpkg unpacks the .deb, preconfigures and then configures the package in amongst all the other operations requested at that time (e.g. apt-get upgrade), runs the maintainer scripts, installs the files from the package, runs the post-install maintainer scripts, updates the status files and then returns. apt then returns aptitude then returns Add/Remove provides the result message. dpkg is the lowest usable level - it knows which scripts to run when and how to create and populate the correct filesystem locations etc. Don't try to anything with packages below the level of dpkg - it will break things. dpkg is actually a collection of tools and works with debhelper in most cases to actually achieve the installation. It's the old story, simplicity on the surface - paddling like crazy under the surface. :-) For a detailed look at package installation and management, see the Debian Developer's Reference and New Maintainer's Guide: http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/ http://www.debian.org/doc/maint-guide/ http://www.debian.org/devel/ > Further though I have not done this, when downloading something which is not > in any of "my" Repositories into any other area than my own home directory I > should use something like alien as this also updates the said file. No idea with Ubuntu, but if you simply use: sudo dpkg -i foo.deb in Debian, dpkg does all the work for you, including updating the system-wide files. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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