[plug] Debian dpkg status question

[Michael Hunt]

> Thanks, Craig.
>
> I went looking for apt- style tools but could not see anything really
> relevant... lots of status and description stuff available in apt-cache
> for example but no low-level manipulation.  Finally bit the bullet and
> fired up dselect which, as you say, easily does the job.  Along the way I
> took the opportunity to add a couple of things and upgrade to some newer
> packages so the "cloud" had a silver lining :-)

Try aptitude. As a user interface it is much more intuitve and doesn't
require you to remember a whole bunch of keystrokes like dselect. I do
appreciate shortcut keys, but trying to remember them all for the many
different programs I use gets very frustrating at times.

> When I say "bit the bullet" I don't want any newcomers to Debian to think
> dselect is something to avoid.  It gives a great degree of control and
> offers intelligent help along the way for dependencies.  Doubtless other
> distros provide something similar.

But once you have used aptitude you will never go back to dselect !!!!

> One thing I did decide upon after experiencing difficulty telnetting into
> the upgraded machine (potato -> woody) was to implement sshd and I'm happy
> to say it was all quite painless.  The main down-side was having to
> install ssh-aware clients on the many Windows boxes at which I sit in my
> day-to-day work.  Teraterm with the ttsh extension seems to be working
> well for me so far.

PuTTY will do the same but TeraTerm is just as acceptable soloution. At
leastb the passwords are not beiong sent in the clear anymore. Putty has the
advantage of being a single exe that doesn't need to be installed, but
unfortunately stores all its settings data in the registry which kind of
defeats the purpose if you ask me !!!!

> Cheers and thanks,
> Denis