dep, FHS, Slackware

[David A. Bandel]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 17:25:05 -0600
begin  Collins <erichey2 at attbi.com> spewed forth:

> On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 13:44:24 -0500 "David A. Bandel"
> <david at pananix.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 1 Jul 2002 09:35:01 -0600
> > begin  Myles Green <mylesg at nucleus.com> spewed forth:
> > 
> > > On Monday 01 July 2002 05:42, Collins wrote:
> > > > On Sun, 30 Jun 2002 22:05:53 -0700 Ken Moffat
> > > > <kmoffat at drizzle.com>
> > > >
> > > > wrote:
> > > > > Collins wrote:
> > > > > >Who has a simple howto on maintaining Slack?  I'm thinking of
> > > > > >something with a database of installed packages, of course.
> > > > >
> > > > > I thought that was 'pkgtool'. Am I mislead again?
> > > > > As root in a terminal type 'pkgtool' and have a look
> > > > > around the installed packages.
> > > >
> > > > I don't think you're mislead, but I'm looking for something
> > > > other than the standard Slack offering, since that only accounts
> > > > for Slack packages, and there aren't Slack packages for a lot of
> > > > stuff.
> > > 
> > > There's always linuxmafia.org for Slackware stuff, you'll find
> > > quite a bit there. IIRC, doesn't installwatch handle building
> > > slackware .tgz packages? It's been a few months since I used Slack
> > > extensively as I've been focusing on Red Hat for the very reasons
> > > M. Hipp gave at the start of this thread.
> > 
> > You can use either checkinstall (not installwatch) for stuff from
> > source, or use alien to take stuff from RPM and/or DEB.
> > 
> 
> And does either of these solutions provide you with an automatically
> updated dtabase of installed/deinstalled packages?  
> 
> I already know how to do this on my primary distribution - everything
> I need is built right in.  
> 

checkinstall builds an RPM (or DEB or TGZ) and installs it using the
appropriate package manager so the database is current.

[snip]

> 
> Otherwise, I'll probably loose interest in my Slack distro really
> fast.  I would think that LFS users face a similar problem.

Duh.  I install popt, then rpm, then checkinstall as early on as possible
(just after I install db).  Then I go back and run checkinstall to create
the RPMs for all already installed packages, and as I continue to build,
create/install RPMs, all the while updating the database.

LFS isn't a real system.  It lacks libpam (I install that just before
shadow-utils and build shadow w/ PAM), dcron (what's a UNIX system without
cron?), db, sendmail, and a passel of other necessary items making RPMs as
I go.  This allows me to upgrade/remove packages at will.  It will give
you the same ability w/ Slackware.

Ciao,

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
		-- Nemesis Racing Team motto