[ Note: since writing this, the mail problem was at least fixed ]
[ for me specifically. I imagine someone with access should ]
[ maybe track down the problem with the WWW-subscribe page... ]
I'm trying to help myself. Really. But, the Debian web pages only
list mailing list archives up to June 1996, and sending a message
with a subject of 'archive help' to debian-user-request as instructed
in the original list "info" file causes the exact same "info" file
to be sent to me.
I'm running a fresh copy of Debian 1.1.9
So, a few questions and some comments:
1. Where is the secret stash of user-packaged packages? I'm looking
for SSH, NcFTP, and a few other things. I've looked in
ftp.debian.org:/debian/contrib/binary, but there are only a
handful of things there.
2. My X server is not recognizing Backspace in Motif programs such as
Netscape Navigator 3.0. I grabbed the XKeysymDB from the Netscape
tar.gz file on ftp.netscape.com and diff'd it with the one in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11 and there appear to be no relevant differences.
3. As user 'jblaine', I was unable to run X due to the X server needing
to put a file in /var/run. I had to chmod u+s my X server for the
time being, which I'm not all too thrilled about. Any advice?
4. Putting packages on a Zip disk and installing from the parallel
port Zip drive on my machine worked like a charm. Before I installed
Debian Linux, I merely created an ext2 filesystem on a blank Zip
disk and started downloading what I wanted of Debian onto the Zip
disk. At 'reboot and dselect' time, I told dselect to use an
'Access Method' of '...from an unmounted partition' and gave it
/dev/sda4 as the block device to mount. Nice.
5. The 6MB kernel-source package is sitting in 'base' on ftp.debian.org.
I believe that's supposed to be in 'devel', but I surely could be
wrong.
6. Naming packages '-dev' and putting them in the 'stable' area is
really confusing. I specifically avoided downloading anything with
'-dev' in it from the stable area until I realized that half of the
packages I wanted to install had dependencies of libc5-dev. I
imagine this could have been avoided had there been some better
documentation past the stock 'Installing from Floppies' document.
Something more useful on the actual FTP site would be helpful.
I imagine this is a nit-pick, but I've just heard so many wonderful
things about the Debian install process, yet I found myself saying
over and over "Man, if I was even mildly Linux clueless, I'd
have given up by now." A Packages.thisdir file or something in
each of 'base, admin, net, ETC ETC' would be incredibly helpful
for people who are not interested in downloading all of the
Debian packages under the stable tree. The idea being that you
have something (that's not enormous like the Packages file) to
reference at each place you're snagging things from.
7. The 'dselect' program was....uhhh...really counter-intuitive to
me to get around in. The whole split-screen thing and too-many
key commands and weird-bindings was very daunting. I know
dselect has to try to hide all of the detailed (and the detail
is what makes the dpkg system so powerful) aspects of dpkg and
stuff, but I didn't feel too removed from all of the complexities
of the dpkg system at all. I just kind of flailed at the +
key while my cursor was on "All Packages" and kept quitting out
of dselect to resolve package dependency issues. I _KNOW_
that the system is complex. It was just very odd to do something
that seems simple to the user: "I'm installing fresh. Here's
where my packages are. Install them!" I'm babbling, I'll
shut up.
8. The smail package post installation script RULES.
9. When installing doc-debian and doc-linux I kept getting
dependency 'recommends info-pager', but I was unable to
tell from any of the file names under stable/binary/*
where an 'info-pager' might be. I went ahead and installed
the packages ASSUMING (yeah, I could have looked at the
big Packages file) that doc-linux had formatted ASCII text
or HTML in them and not just GNU info style information.
10. Things seem to have just fallen off the face of the earth
after June 1996. What's going on? There are dead links
on the arguably most important document on the Debian
WWW site: The Installation Instructions. None of the links
to the base14*, root.bin, and boot1440.bin disks work.
Now, having said all of this, YES, I am willing to help out
when and wherever I can. I just need someone to point me
in the right direction or contact me directly via email.
Jeff Blaine <> Net Daemons Associates, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <> http://www.nda.com/~jblaine/
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