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Do we need this crap on LWN?Do we need this crap on LWN?Posted Feb 21, 2007 17:19 UTC (Wed) by evgeny (guest, #774)In reply to: Do we need this crap on LWN? by ofeeley Parent article: ESR's goodbye note
> Well, there seem to be a lot of changes already happening around RPM after a period of relative stasis: http://wiki.rpm.org/Docs/RpmOrgFAQ
This FAQ doesn't answer the principal question: what key features are going to be in RPM that don't currently exist in deb/apt-get?? or cannot be added with a lesser efforts to deb??
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Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 18:11 UTC (Wed) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] I'm a long-time Debian user but one feature in RPM that's not in the deb system is the ability to check the integrity of an installed package. With RPM I remember I could run with an option and it will see if all the packages files still were installed and would check the MD5SUM of each file against the package database. It was an easy way to check if files from a package were missing or corrupted. It helped me when once on a RH 7.x machine I accidentally ran "rm -rf /usr". I was able to find out what files were missing and then reinstall all of the relevant packages.
Despite research and asking other debian sysadmins I could not find any options in dpkg to handle this.
integrity checking Posted Feb 21, 2007 18:28 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] apt-get install debsums
integrity checking Posted Feb 21, 2007 19:38 UTC (Wed) by sandy_pond (guest, #9734) [Link] I don't think this has much to do with RPM vs debs as much as this link:
http://in.sys-con.com/read/278818.htm
"One of the co-founders of the open source movement has become the member of the Freespire Leadership Board. Freespire is a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that gives users the option of combining free open source software with certain proprietary codecs, drivers and applications. Raymond, well-known as both a theorist and an advocate for the open source movement, joins twelve other Freespire Leadership Board members, composed of thinkers, business people, evangelists, and key members of the Linux community."
integrity checking Posted Feb 21, 2007 20:52 UTC (Wed) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link] I use debsums and I would like to note that .md5sums file is optional for .deb packages, unlike .rpms where I think md5sums are mandatory and could always be verified by rpm -V.
integrity checking Posted Feb 22, 2007 0:25 UTC (Thu) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link] > apt-get install debsums
Thanks, but that highlights another think I dislike about debian. There are too many commands for package management. Now I have to remember dpkg, dpkg-query, and debsums along with all of their different options to manage my packages. At least with RPM systems there's a single command and options to remember which is just "rpm". Also, why isn't debsums' functionality built into the package management system by default? And why isn't debsums installed by default.
integrity checking Posted Feb 22, 2007 3:24 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well you don't have to remember anything.
Use wajig tool or the jig interface.
It's a python package management system that does it right. It basicly takes the functionality provided by all these little tools and utilities and makes a nice little user-friendly interface for it.
For example to backport a package from testing to stable you'd go like this:
wajig update
For instance I did that with OpenAFS server since the newer version in Testing was much better then what was aviable by default in stable. Took a whole 10 minutes to download, compile, then install the package.
Also I could of easily then taken the package and installed it on a bunch of machines.
The python bash-completion stuff works for it in testing. So if you go:
Or you can go:
Also it has intellegent handling of agruements with trying to do best effort match to your command to a certain extent.
will do the same thing.
Also you can do search through package names using tab.
And not only is the thing written in python and is convient to use.. it is QUICK. Very quick. Because the UI is in python were speed is not critical, but on the heavy calculating stuff it's all done by the little C programs that it's a front-end for.
That's the nice thing about Debian.
It's tools are small and contained. Just fast little utilities. Why have everything in some huge monolythic application? It just makes it buggy and difficult to use.
BTW this is the functionality you can get with wajig + debian package tools.
A lot of people prefer not to use front ends and use the tools directly, but I am lazy like that.
addcdrom -- Add a CD-ROM to the list of available sources of packages
""Also, why isn't debsums' functionality built into the package management system by default? And why isn't debsums installed by default.""
Probably because there is little need for it to be installed by default.
With Debian Etch signed packages are going to be used by default. This will ensure that they are not tampered with and are not corrupt. This is the most important reason why you'd need checksums...
There are lots of little things that make your life easier.
Like for instance 'deborphans'. Which uninstalls unused dependancies that may have been installed by a package you ended up removing later.
Or for example: localepurge.
Localepurge can be used to remove locales and localized man pages. It can save many hundreds of megs of disk space, maybe even a gig or two on a machine with a lot of stuff installed. Once you run it then it will automaticly be ran after installing or upgrading packages.
This stuff seriously kicks-ass. Most of the time the functionality of Yum is fine.
But Yum's slowness can be a huge pain. At my work I use a old 600mhz machine. A update using yum got interrupted halfway through becuase I ran out of disk space on / (my mistake).
I was there fixing it from 1 am to 5 am in the morning and the majority of the time was spent on waiting on yum to painfully go through it's motions. It was very very painfull to watch. Even with the -C switch it was painfull.
If it was Debian, and not CentOS:
would of fixed it in about 3 minutes.
integrity checking Posted Feb 22, 2007 5:44 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] wajig is pretty fantastic. I wish it had become the standard instead of aptitude, and as a result was a bit more maintained.
There are some pretty simple glaring bugs with wajig that have gone unfixed for a lonnnng time. wajig show package fails if it is no longer downloadable but currently installed. apt-cache shows it fine. Huh?
Yeah I should submit a patch but sorry the other 15-odd patches I've submitted about other debian tools have come first.
apt in CentOS (was: integrity checking) Posted Mar 1, 2007 4:24 UTC (Thu) by topher (guest, #2223) [Link] Just a note, if you enable the CentOS Extras repository on a CentOS 4.x box, there is an apt package available. You can enable it, use yum to install it, and then use apt to manage your packages from then on.
Definitely worth it, IMO. ;-)
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 18:14 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] Okay, here's a key feature dpkg+apt is lacking that RPM has had for some time now:
* Sane multi-lib support.
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 23:07 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Not quite. "yum install foo" will install both foo.x86_64 and foo.i386 and all dependencies for both. I expect it to install foo.x86_64 only. Apart from that, it's mostly OK.
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 8:08 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] So, run "yum install foo.x86_64".
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 18:37 UTC (Wed) by foo (guest, #1117) [Link] I prefer debs, too, but one thing I missfrom my RPM days is the ability to query which package owns a particular file.
E.g.:
# rpm -qf /etc/diameter/sunping.xml
which package owns a file Posted Feb 21, 2007 18:50 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] dpkg -S /etc/diameter/sunping.xml
which package owns a file Posted Feb 22, 2007 15:00 UTC (Thu) by foo (guest, #1117) [Link] Great, thanks!
which package owns a file Posted Feb 27, 2007 23:00 UTC (Tue) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link] Yeah but whats up with this?
dpkg -S /etc/passwd
Whereas:
which package owns a file Posted Feb 27, 2007 23:15 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] That's a generated file rather than one installed from a package. (The base-passwdpackage generates it, but I realize your point is about how to get that information.) The easiest way I know to get that sort of information is to grep the files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/.
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 19:16 UTC (Wed) by fmarier (subscriber, #19894) [Link] To search in your installed packages:dpkg -S /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2
To search in all packages (installed or not), first install the "apt-file" package, then run:
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 19:48 UTC (Wed) by vondo (guest, #256) [Link] Since we've got deb experts reading this... The thing I miss from rpm days that I don't know how to do in deb/apt is:
rpm -qa --last
Give me a list of all the packages installed and order them by the last time they were updated.
dpkg magic Posted Feb 21, 2007 20:55 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] I don't think a capability like that is built in, but try this:ls -ltr /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list | sed -e 's,^.*/\([^/]*\)\.list,\1,'
dpkg magic Posted Feb 21, 2007 22:06 UTC (Wed) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link] Ah, but what would Eric say about such an unfriendly, regressive, inward-focused approach to software design?
Okay, yeah, sorry, I've got nothing.
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 5:46 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Until _quite_ recently this was completely impossible. Really. No records were kept at all.
Now that dpkg keeps a log, someone could at least write such a thing, although I don't think one exists yet.
dpkg log Posted Feb 22, 2007 14:41 UTC (Thu) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link] the ls/sed hack I posted above works on Debian sarge, which (although current stable)isn't exactly "quite recent". No need for the dpkg log. And as far as I can see, recent dpkg only keeps a log if you explicitly tell it to anyway. (Though I could be missing something more recent.)
dpkg log Posted Feb 22, 2007 18:21 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] Buh, I didn't look at the criteria closely. I've often needed a log and found the 'most recent update' information was too lossy.
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 16:49 UTC (Thu) by akumria (subscriber, #7773) [Link] Something like:
eve:[~]% sudo tail /var/log/dpkg.log
perhaps?
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 21, 2007 22:50 UTC (Wed) by mrons (subscriber, #1751) [Link] How about:
yum localinstall somerandom.rpm
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 0:55 UTC (Thu) by mrons (subscriber, #1751) [Link] > yum localinstall somerandom.rpm
Just to expand on what this does, yum looks at what dependencies somerandom.rpm has and installs those with somerandom.rpm
somerandom.rpm does not have to belong to some {un}official repository.
So it's like "rpm -i" except that repositories are consulting to resolve dependencies.
Can I do something like "apt-get somerandom.deb" and have dependencies resolved for me?
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 1:51 UTC (Thu) by spotter (subscriber, #12199) [Link] not directly.
if you
dpkg -i some.deb
that will try to install it, but it wont configure due to missing dependencies.
and
apt-get install -f
will then fix it as it will resolve the missing dependencies and configure everything.
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 5:47 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] I use wajig as my do-everything debian package tool. It supports 'wajig install <packagename>' as well as 'wajig install ./a_package-3-3_i386.deb'
Do we need this crap on LWN? Posted Feb 22, 2007 0:01 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] "" This FAQ doesn't answer the principal question: what key features are going to be in RPM that don't currently exist in deb/apt-get?? or cannot be added with a lesser efforts to deb?? ""
hmm ... better would be what misses in both, and or what can be improved in both.
well i remenber GoboLinux... its so damn easy that is hard to belive
But of course, many "commercial" apps already big on other environments, and that Linux would be needing to get a strong foot inside the workstation/desktop arena, arent going be be distributed in source code :(
But then again solutions appear like if by magic...
So, imho, what Linux need is a crossplatform installer capable of dealing with RPM and deb, and also capable of installing from source code... if only InstallJammer could implement that source code feature!... it would be perfect.
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