[rescue] Re: Re: Small serial terminal

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 07:52:12PM +0100, Frank Van Damme wrote:

> > dpkg and apt amaze me less now that I find info on reparing them on my
> > debian gnu/linux machine. :(
> 
> I suppose if you also nuked /usr, and /lib for instance, restoring
> everything MIGHT be a pain :)

/usr and /lib are mostly there.  At least, they are there enough to get
most day to day work done fine.
 
> What do the debian developpers waste their time with? What you need is linux 
> from scratch. 

Well, I was using debians package manager a lot, but I was never able to
figure out how to make it install a package, even though it didn't think
the dependecies were met.  

Then of course, the package manager failed altogether.
 
Linux from scratch would nearly be right up my alley, except I never got
around to it.  I've spent most of the past year trying to do things the
debian way.  Most of the rest of my years using linux, a distribution
was just a quick starting point, after which point I did everything as
if from scratch.  And I chose distributions based on what was closest to
what I wanted out of box, which currently means I want 2.4 immediately
(though I'll recompile the kernel anyway, I don't really want to have to
upgrade all the support programs), Xfree 4.2 immediately, emacs 21, GCC
3.2 immediately, and certain other utilities usefull for getting
started, like a simple web browser, wget, telnet, ftp, etc.  Everything
else (windowmanagers, desktop stuff, databases, web servers, etc), I was
happy to build.

Still, when it worked, debian's package management worked nicely.  Until
it got torched, my only complaint was that I was never able to figure
out how to force it to install a package whose dependencies weren't met
according to the database.  This need was caused by needing to custom
compile some packages (in particular, GTK+, since debian, last I
checked, didn't have proper xinput support for using my wacom with the
GIMP).  Since the package management got torched, someone pointed out
that if I'd used apt to get the source, say for GTK, then programs that
depend on GTK would consider the dependecy met.  Haven't verified this
yet, though for obvious reasons.

I'll try the stuff you included on rebuilding when I get home
tonight. I'm at work currently.