On 14-Mar-2002 Paul F. Pearson wrote:
> 1) when using Dselect, I sometimes select packages, and find
> out that I don't have the space to actually install them. How
> can I "unselect all"?
When I find that I'm out of space, here's what I usually do.
Instead of using dselect, I use apt-get. It generally wants to pull
fewer packages down. If it all fits, great. After they install, I "sudo
rm /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb" to free up disk space, and then run
dselect to finish installing the rest of the stuff.
If apt-get also wants to pull down too much stuff, depending on how
close I am, I might just manually install a few packages and then remove
the corresponding .debs until I have enough space to pull all of
apt-get's desired stuff down.
If this is going to be too much work (in which case you may want to
think about resizing your /var partition, which may mean getting a newer
bigger drive), I believe you can tell apt/dselect to use a different
location for the cached .debs. But I've never done that, and don't care
to look up the details, but it should be in "man apt-get".
