Joe -- good talk. I learned a few things. Just wanted to pass along these other tidbits that I was talking about at dinner, and a couple of others I wanted to mention.
aptitude
text-based package manager that allows for downgrading packages.
Installed by default on Debian, I suspect it might be on Ubuntu also.
To see the versions available, press 'v' on a package, select another
version for installation with the '+' key. 'g' means "Go",
just like the "Apply" button in Synaptic. Press '?' for the help
screen + key legend.
Aptitude also makes a log as it works in /var/log/aptitude similar
to the log that Synaptic makes. Just like you said -- saves your butt.
deborphan
Not installed by default; in it's own package with the same name.
Lists all the orphaned packages on the system; by default it only looks
at orphaned libraries rather than all packages. apt-get autoremove
seem to be have the same way, looking at orphaned libraries rather than
all packages. [IMHO this is actually as it should be.]
checkinstall
Not installed by default; in it's own package with the same name.
When compiling source code that's outside of the distribution you can
still make a package out of the built code (a .deb, .rpm, or .tgz) so
that the installed binaries can be easily removed later or for
installation on another system. This is not meant to replace proper
Debian package generation, but rather is an easy quick-n-dirty tool
to allow installing code from source as a package even though there
isn't a proper package available for it.
apt-get clean
clears out the cached packages in /var/cache/apt/archives/
Just ran it on my desktop, gained back 1.2 GB. Yeah, I forgot about it
for a while. :-P
remember to mount /proc before doing a chroot
The contents of the /proc directory contain special files that are
actually pointers into kernel space; some programs need the information
in /proc to get certain information. I just do this by habit even if
what I'm doing may not need it.
So the procedure for doing a rescue changes just slightly:
boot rescue cd
make directory for mounting the system to be rescued: mkdir /mnt/rescue
mount the necessary partition -- Ex: mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/rescue
mount proc -- Ex: mount -o bind /proc /mnt/rescue/proc
[ As Mike mentioned at dinner the -o bind isn't necessary,
but the above is easier for me to remember than:
mount -t proc proc /mnt/rescue/proc ]
chroot into rescue environment -- Ex: chroot /mnt/rescue
And and the end and you forget what you did to get here, remember that
the reason you can't unmount /mnt/rescue is because you have to unmount
/mnt/rescue/proc first. :-)
Wanted to write this up before I forgot about it.
Cheers
-- Chris
--
Chris Knadle
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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