VVDQ : Alpine on Ubuntu??

[Beartooth Testbedder]

On Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:03:18 -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:

> Beartooth Testbedder wrote:
> 
>> I went to UW, downloaded a .deb for Alpine 1.0, and tried UW's
>> instructions for installing it with "dpkg -i alpine_1.00_i386.deb"
>> 
>> That got an error message. I chewed on it, to no avail, while I did some
>> other stuff
> 
> Without the message, there's not much we can do, but I'd suggest that it's
> probably partly installed now, and "sudo aptitude -f install" might finish
> the job.

I'd've quoted the message if I still had it; it was about a dependency
conflict, and much like what I did quote, just below. 
 
>> Now I've gotten another error message, while doing something unrelated,
>> obviously meant to remind me of the loose end. And I can't make head
>> nor tail of it, either :
>> 
>> root at SblzUb:/home/btth# qtparted &
>> [1] 32684
>> root at SblzUb:/home/btth# qtparted: cannot connect to X server
> 
> Again, you don't really give us enough context, but at a guess I'd say
> you have used "su" (evil!) or "sudo -i" to get a root shell, and are now
> trying to run qtparted with predictable results.  Use "kdesudo qtparted"
> from your _own_ shell (though I think you need to give it a disk name).

Well, with respect, from where I stand it's sudo that's evil. I'm no Alpha
Plus Technoid, nor was meant to be. When I found out I'd have to learn vi
just to set it up, I abandoned all hope of it. But, being fortunately in
possession of machines no one else ever touches (Do not do this at work!),
I simply took to keeping one gnome terminal tab logged into root all the
time -- with certain precautions, of course. That was at least ten years
back, and I'm getting old ...

What's a disk name?? 

(That "SblxUb" in the prompts is either a machine
name, or more likely a name for the partition(s?) containing Ubuntu. I'm
not quite sure which -- won't be, till I can get the triple boot
working. The whole machine has only one 40 GB hard drive.)

>> root at SblzUb:/home/btth# apt-get install qtparted
> 
> Not necessary...

So I discovered -- but only when I tried that. 

I had to do something : Qtparted does launch, both
from the icon on the panel, and from a prompt with "qtparted &" -- but
only in a useless way. I want it because it seems, at least under Fedora,
to tell me more about what partitions I've got now than gparted does. (I
think Ubuntu hosed my CentOS, even though I tried to use the alternate CD.
More about that in another thread.)

>> Reading package lists...
>> Done Building dependency tree... Done qtparted is already the newest
>> version. You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
>> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>>   alpine: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6) but 2.3.6-0ubuntu20.5 is to be
>>   installed
> 
> ...As I said.

Yes -- and, again, as I found out only by doing that.

>> Having run Linux since RH7, I'm only too familiar with dependency
>> hells. (Maybe Debian has a general solution??)
> 
> Yes - it involves never installing packages from unknown repositories
> using dpkg.  alpine is in the "universe" repository, and if you used
> that (by enabling it in either /etc/apt/sources.list or
> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ - there should be a commented line somewhere),
> then all the dependencies would have been resolved.

OK; the place I looked to find about repos must have confused me. I, if
not my wife, will need apps that neither synaptic nor the other installer
seems able out of the box to get. (The other I mean seems to be called
Package Manager, and to use "usr/bin/gnome-app-install" to install.

> I recommend "sudo dpkg --purge remove alpine", then "sudo aptitude
> update" (after enabling the universe repository), and "sudo aptitude
> install alpine".

The springing point may be your 'after enabling the universe repository'
-- which may prove non-trivial. Again, food for another thread.

I'm starting the sequence you suggest now; it seems to want to check many
doubtless very needful things. Stay tuned.
    
>> But I'm almighty leery of any kind of -f option, let alone an install
>> command with no argument. Do I really want to do that?? What does it
>> mean by "(or specify a solution)"??
> 
> In this case, no you don't want to do that, because you've got a package
> that quite possibly isn't compatible with Ubuntu, but it is generally
> safe.

Hmmm -- 'generally safe' meaning perhaps simply that it's known not to be
malware?

>-f is "fix", which just means do whatever's necessary to resolve
> dependency issues - and it won't do them until it tells you what it
> wants and gives you a chance to respond.

Aha! Ein altes Wort bewaehrt sich leider auch an mir : it's not what you
don't know that does the big damage. It's what you think you know, that
ain't so. I supposed -f for "force" -- erroneously -- to be close to a
unix standard for "force." And failed to question it.

OK, many thanks! There are lots of pointers in this thread, and
especially this post, toward the kinds of things I have to find out about.

LATER : the first cleanup command ran fine : 

btth at SblzUb:~$ sudo dpkg --purge remove alpine
Password:
dpkg - warning: ignoring request to remove remove which isn't installed.
(Reading database ... 87227 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing alpine ...
Purging configuration files for alpine ...
btth at SblzUb:~$

But the next one ran into lots of brambles. So I tried this : 

btth at SblzUb:~$ cd /etc/apt
btth at SblzUb:/etc/apt$ ls
apt.conf    secring.gpg   sources.list~   sources.list.save  trusted.gpg
apt.conf.d  sources.list  sources.list.d  trustdb.gpg        trusted.gpg~
btth at SblzUb:/etc/apt$ ls sources.list.d

[That got no list, despite nano having just assured me sources.list.d was
a directory, but just the prompt back. This seems *very* strange ...]

btth at SblzUb:/etc/apt$ nano -w sources.list.d

[Again, no response -- just the prompt back.]

btth at SblzUb:/etc/apt$ cd sources.list.d
btth at SblzUb:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$ ls
btth at SblzUb:/etc/apt/sources.list.d$

[still no response! What's more, putting sudo in front of it made nano
open -- a new file! Ubuntu says it's there, and won't let me open it.]

I'm stumped -- again.

PS:

A little background may help some of you understand, or even tolerate, my
approach: committed though I am to Fedora for my own use, I can see that
my wife, who takes little interest in computers but does write books --
and who is obviously going to outlive me -- will need something a lot less
subject to change after I'm no longer able to shoot its troubles.

But that means I have to use it, too, at least enough for the purpose;
and, curmudgeon that I am, I'm trying to see how closely I can adapt
either of the obvious candidates to the way I've been doing things. 

If I can do that, I can surely adapt to her needs; if not, maybe I still
can. <sigh>

Once more, much thanks for all the help!

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck, Double Retiree,
Not Quite Clueless Linux Power User : F8, C5.1, U6.06;
I have precious (very precious) little idea where up is.