VVDQ : Alpine on Ubuntu??

Tue Jan 8 15:35:44 UTC 2008

On Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:09:22 -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:

> Beartooth Testbedder wrote:

>> When I found out I'd have to learn vi 
>> just to set it up, I abandoned all hope of it. 
> 
> You don't - I'm not sure what hopeless terminal geek-case came up with the
> name "visudo", but it (at least in Debian/Ubuntu) runs your EDITOR, not vi
> (though the documentation implies that that's not the default case on other
> distros).  In my case, EDITOR is "joe", and it uses joe.  I'm rather
> surprised that every distro doesn't come with both a "visudo" and
> an "emacsudo" command :-)

Now, *there* is a bit of news I really like. If I open a text file in
Fedora with Nautilus, it uses gedit; I bet I can set EDITOR to that.

> However, in Ubuntu you already have sudo configured for you if you're the
> only person using the machine.

Oho : so that's why it wants *my* password, instead of root's. Took me a
while to cotton to that, or even discover it...

>> What's a disk name??
> 
> /dev/sda, /dev/hda, etc.  

Shuddathunka that. My face is red.

> I don't have qtparted installed, so I could be
> wrong about needing that, anyway (in fact, I suspect I must be, as I
> _do_ have parted, and I see it defaults to my only internal hd).

Here's an oddity. I tried some new command -- I think it must have been
this : 

btth at SblzUb:~$ kdesudo qtparted
bash: kdesudo: command not found
btth at SblzUb:~$

BUT, surprisingly enough, qtparted *did* open, and this time it does what
I needed. It gives me the one more item of info that my guru requires:
we're down to the point of figuring out, when I tried to use 6.06
Alternate to re-partition, I actually hosed the previously resident
CentOS completely (and will have to re-install it), or whether I just
messed up my bootery (I certainly did that; can't get grub to boot CentOS
at all any more), but will be able to when I know what to change it *to*

>> 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.
> 
> Both should have options to change the repositories - they use the same
> basic configuration, even if they use different front-ends.  In
> synaptic, the option is under "Settings / Repositories" and you should
> be able to just find a check-box for "universe"
> 
>> The springing point may be your 'after enabling the universe
>> repository' -- which may prove non-trivial. Again, food for another
>> thread.
> 
> No, it should be easy.

It's worse even than I thought. I just tried to open the Package manager;
it started its usual checks, then gave me this : 

> Failed to check for installed and available applications

> This is a major failure of your software management system. Check the
> file
> permissions and correctness of the file '/etc/apt/sources.list' and
> reload
> the software information: 'sudo apt-get update'.

And the worst thing is that that's the file I couldn't get into to edit
yesterday!
[...]
>> 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
>> 
> _Either_ /etc/apt/sources.list (a file) or _at least one_ file
> in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ are required (and both may be present).  The
> current tendency is to put separate files for each repository
> in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ but your system may only have the single file
> in /etc/apt/sources.list.  In either case:
> 
> # grep -r universe /etc/apt/sources.list*
> 
> will tell you which files contain a source for universe (note only files
> named *.list in the sources.list.d directory are used - there could be
> backup files in there).

OK, that may be the salvation of the whole thing -- which is Greek to me ... : 

btth at SblzUb:~$ grep -r universe /etc/apt/sources.list*
/etc/apt/sources.list:## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
/etc/apt/sources.list:## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
/etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
/etc/apt/sources.list: deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:# deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:# deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:# deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:# deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:# deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
/etc/apt/sources.list.save:# deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
btth at SblzUb:~$

-- 
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.