[plug] further LAMP

[James Devenish]

Hi,

In message <6.0.0.22.0.20031227193947.01b83e68 at pop.ozemail.com.au>
on Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 08:05:53PM +0800, smclevie wrote:
> What does one do when something doesn't work on Debian?

Swear, apportion blame, start a flamewar?

> Cameron says 
> 'don't wipe the disk...' but is there a clever
> Windows-like repair procedure?

It's usually not a matter of "repair" as such. Because APT keeps track
of software dependencies, all the currently-installed software should be
fine (though it might be missing 'optional extras' that you would
appreciate). That is, your problem will be that you'll be missing a lot
of things that you previously had. The simple solution would be "just
reinstall all the things you uninstalled". Or, rather, "add things back
when you notice they are missing". If you used tasksel to do your
initial installation, perhaps you can run it again to bring the system
back to its near-original state?

> Explanation of previous post:  I installed apache perl and php at one stage 
> and had apache working but php wouldn't (from apt-get).

That doesn't make sense.

> I then started down the road of installing according to a couple of nice 
> fat texts I recently bought and
> saw there were a great many "--with-" and "--enable-" options.  So this is 
> basically how I came to the conclusion that I needed
> to work from sources.

Okay, that's right, the books are describing the process using source
code. However, that is merely the lowest-common-denominator approach.
Because Debian comes with thousands of pre-compiled packages, the effort
has already been done on your behalf and you don't need to do it
yourself (unless you have "unusual" requirements compared to the view of
the Debian maintainers).

> I've also had a look at a package called ApacheToolbox.  This also 
> indicates a heap of options.  I want it all.. (Freddie & Queen)

If there is no Debian package, you can probably install ApacheToolbox
from source despite installing Apache from a binary distribution.

> When I install things I want every bloody option even though I may not ever 
> use them!! (just like Windows)

With Debian, the attitude is more of an install-as-needed approach. But,
if you do something like `apt-cache search php-` would will see lots of
PHP packages that you can *opt* to install if you want to. (I would
suggest only installing the ones that catch your fancy, though!)

> Is there a 'SELECT ALL' option!?!

Truthfully: you *don't* want to do that.