Alien help for newbie.

[Brian Durant]

 --- Bob Nielsen <nielsen at oz.net> skrev: 
> On Thu, Jan 27, 2005 at 09:45:54AM +0100, Brian
> Durant wrote:
> > I would like to install stardict-2.4.4-1.i386.rpm
> and
> > some noarch.rpm dictionary files into my Warty
> 4.10,
> > but I haven't been able to find any documentation
> that
> > I would understand as a newbie. I get the sudo
> alien
> > -i stardict*, but how do I check if an install of
> > stardict-2.4.4-1.i386.rpm will even work before I
> do a
> > real install that would also include the
> noarch.rpm
> > files. Am I just nervous and making this out to be
> a
> > bigger problem than it is? I just don't want to
> break
> > anything in the system.
> 
> It would probably be better to run alien without the
> -i option and
> convert each of them to a .deb package, then run
> dpkg -i to install
> them. You could run 'dpkg --no-run -i
> <filename.deb>' to simulate
> the installation.  

OK, I got the .RPMs converted to .deb packages, but
dpkg returned the following:

/stardict $ dpkg --no-run -i stardict_2.4.4-2_i386.deb
dpkg: unknown option --no-run

dpkg help suggests: --no-act|--dry-run|--simulate Just
say what we would do - don't do it 

that returned:

/stardict $ dpkg --no-act|--dry-run|--simulate
stardict_2.4.4-2_i386.deb
dpkg: need an action option

Options marked [*] produce a lot of output - pipe it
through `less' or `more' !
bash: --dry-run: command not found
bash: --simulate: command not found

Cheers,

Brian