dpkg and changing install media (was RE: [plug] RedHat & Debian)

[Matt Kemner]

On Fri, 12 Mar 1999, Shackleton, Kevin wrote:

> I installed Debian from CD and then removed the CD drive.
> Now I don't seem to be able to tell dpkg to look to an nfs drive to install
> other packages.

Use dselect, or better, install apt and use that.
dpkg doesn't care what media you're on, you just point it at a file and
say "install this".

When you run dselect and choose access method you can choose from nfs,
ftp, mounted partition, unmounted partition, cdrom, and floppy.
If you install apt (found in the admin of slink) dselect gives that as an
option too, but it's just as easy to just edit /etc/apt/sources.list and
just add the line:
deb ftp://ftp.uwa.edu.au/mirrors/linux/debian slink main contrib non-free

(or wherever your nearest debian mirror is)
you can point it at file://my/nfs/drive too.
Then just run apt-get update and you can install packages with
apt-get install <package name> - it will install all depended-on packages
too.  You can upgrade your entire system with apt-get dist-upgrade

You don't need to have installed slink before using apt.. If you're
currently using hamm, I would recommend apt to upgrade to slink.
All you need, is to grab from the slink cd/ftp site the files:

admin/apt_*.deb
base/libc6_*.deb
base/libstdc++2.9_*.deb

At least that's all I've needed so far.

 - Matt