On Sun, Mar 04, 2001 at 09:45:24AM -0500, Holp, John Mr. wrote: > Debian Warriors, > > Is there a general technique or utility that allows one to install a > non-Debina package on a Debian system? > > I am finding very sketchy information about a thing called > "alien" syntax something like; > > alien package_name.rpm > > Will apparently convert/create a Red Hat ".rpm" package to a Debian > ".deb" package ?? > > I don't think apt or apt-get need or understand packages with the > .deb suffix. So is it possible to use apt or apt-get on a non-Debian > package to install it on a Debian system? > > man alien, whereis alien, whatis alien, etc., etc produce no > indication of such a thing on my Debian 2.2.17 machine.
...which seems to indicate that you do not have alien installed. Alien is a package in its own right and must be installed firt to work. So: apt-get install alien And then yes, you are correct, doing an alien package_name.rpm will *try* to convert the rpm into a deb. You can then do a dpkg -i package_name.deb and the package will be installed. The package database will be kept current. Hope this helps. Matthew -- Matthew Sackman Nottingham, ENGLAND Using Debian/GNU Linux Enjoying computing
