On Tue, 3 Mar 1998, Henry Hollenberg wrote: > Hello Joost and thanks for the reply. > > I've been tinkering with dselect and I think I've figured out enough to > get it to do what it can for me......as far as that goes.
Oh, sorry, I didn't quite get that. > But I'm trying to do a "custom" install with alots of selected packages > for a bastion host/firewall. This would be cumbersome to do by hand on > the three machines that would make up the firewall. > therefore I believe dselect just will not have the functionality required > for this project and that is why I'm looking into dpkg. You're probably wrong about that: - theoretically because: dselect builds on dpkg; it provides extra functionality that dpkg doesn't have and calls upon dpkg to do what dpkg can. - practically because: see suggestions below; > It looks as if dpkg can probably pull it off.....I'm just not sure how to > use it in this complex scenario.....I've used it for simpler stuff and it > works great.....installing a kernel dselect couldn't find for instance > (2.0.33). Was that a kernel you brewed yourself with kernel-package? Then it probably wasn't mentioned in a "Packages" file. How would dselect know about your package then? Dselect's standard way of getting to know what packages are available in an archive is to run dpkg --update-avail on the Packages file that comes with the archive. You could have made a Packages file yourself, with dpkg-scanpackages and put that in a DIY archive and use it with dselect (making a custom archive). You'll have to make an "override" file too, to get dpkg-scanpackages to add sections to the packages entries in the Packages file. You can find examples in the ftp.debian.org /debian/indices/ directory. Or (not using an archive at all) you could have used dpkg --avail custom-kernel.deb. I'm afraid you'd have to put the .deb on a floppy to use it with dselect, because that's the only way it knows how to deal with a non-archive. In this simple case, dpkg -i by hand is more convinient of course. > so my question remains, what are the steps? Another solution is to build a package with dependencies on all the packages you want to install. Create an archive that contains that package, the packages it depends on and packages that those depend on. Since you want to build a firewall, you'll probably want to put in a _lot_ of conflicts as well ;-). Use dpkg-scanpackages to generate a Packages file. Burn it on a cd or put it on your ftp site and it should work fine with dselect and deity. If you're really serious about creating your own cd, then dselect is definately the way to go. Cheers, Joost -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
