thelinuxlink.net

I was listenning to the last show and I heard lots of stuff about debian based stuff.

So it's been a while.. That show was on the 10th? And it's the 13th now.

But here are some interesting things for people interesting in Debian or Debian-based distros...

For instance debian has a lot of different applications for handling packages.. apt-get, apt-cache, dselect, aptitude, etc etc etc. For instance if you want to isntall a package you have to go:
apt-get install blahblahblah

But in order to do that you have to find it... but you can't do that with apt-get.. you have to use apt-cache. Like this:
apt-cache search blahblahblah

So that stuff is difficult to remember and all that... Well there is a unified tool written using python and it's called 'wajig'.. it's pretty handy.
wajig install blah
wajig search blah
so on and so forth.. Plus it has _semi-intellegent_ handling of arguements, too.
So if you forget and you go:
wajig Install blah or wajig INSTALL blah, or even wajig in-stall blah, it will figure out that your just trying to use 'install' and use that.

So it's a much nicer command line interface for Debian. You don't have to search for all this archane command line stuff like you normally do..

For isntance if you want to reconfigure a package, like for instance you change your vid card and you want to change Xorg's config, then you have to remember to do:
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Which is a bit strange. Normally you'd think to do it thru apt-get or whatnot.
But it works just find thru the wajig interface:
wajig reconfigure xserver-xorg

Then when your doing even more obscure stuff, like if you need to update a package, but debian has a package but it's not new enough, you can use wajig and debian package stuff to download the source code package, then you can patch it and compile it and not have to worry about screwing up or forcing any software that depends on said package.

Just be sure that when you install it you install the recommended packages, too. They are needed for lots of wajig's features.

Also it works with bash's newer autocomplete features.

Tip #2 is for Bash's autocomplete stuff.

This is very handy.. I don't know if it's perfect though. Also I am only using Debian Unstable, so I don't know if all this stuff is in regular Debian Stable.

to enable it you need to go to /etc/bash.bashrc for system-wide or your ~/.bashrc and remove the # in front of:
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
. /etc/bash_completion
fi

to enable it.

Then various applications and such stick their scripts, and you can stick your scripts into /etc/bash_completion.d
and get special tab autocompletion stuff.

For instance when I use:
mpg123
and hit <tab> <tab> it will only show the sub directories and files related to mpg123... Like *.mp3 files and such.
And the same thing with ogg123, I use that in a crowded directory and only get subdirectories and ogg files. So it makes it much easier to pick out audio files.

Lots of programs will work like that, but not all. But it's handy for common applications.

Also wajig supports it.. so if your looking for a command and your not sure what it is you can use autocomplete to show you the 108 or so instructions that wajig can deal with. And it will then work for packages or targets after that...
So If I needed to find out information about gnome-games package, but I wasn't sure what the name was I'd go..

wajig <tab><tab>
and find the instruction 'readme'
then I'd go
wajig rea<tab> gno<tab><tab>
and then find the gnome-games package then I'd pipe that into less and read the readme information about that package. For isntance it has a couple paragraphs warning you about the transition from 2.8 series gnome games and the current 2.10 series from the package maintainer.

So on and so forth...

So that's something I just figured out lately about debian and whatnot and I thought maybe people here would find it usefull. Apart from debian reference, which itself is aviable thru apt-get there is the Debian desktop survival guide aviable at:
http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/


Also if your a perl fan Debian has some perl cpan modules aviable thru their apt-get repositories... but not many.

So in order to install extra perl::whatever stuff I had to figure out how to use cpan and all that and since I am pretty much perl clueless it's difficult.

Well I found out that debian has the ability to compile cpan modules and put them into packages and install them. You have to download the sources for them first though..

The tool is called dh-make-perl... and it's pretty handy.

I found that just recently thru http://www.debian-administration.org/
They have a article about it..

Also another great resource for people new to Debian is aviable at:
http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/

Very handy is the information on how to build your own custom kernels using Debian's packaging tools so that you can make a package to keep track of or install on multiple machines. It's pretty handy.

Newbie documentation written by recently Debian ex-newbies.

So while it may not apply directly I think it would still be usefull if your using a Debian based distro like Mephis, Ubuntu, knoppix, or whatnot.

BTW I'm on Debian unstable.. I am using X.org, Gnome 2.10, kernel 2.6.12 and all other stuff...

And one other thing before I forget.

For handling kernel modules that are aviable from Debian, but are not in the vanilla kernel is a tool called module-assistant.

It has a nice interface to find, update, download, compile, and install various modules and such that are not normally aviable. So if you need to install ndiswrapper, or wlan prism2 drivers, or ipw2100 or ipw2200 drivers for intel wireless you can do that thru module-assistant a little bit easier. Doesn't always work all the time, but it's handy.

A note on the Nvidia stuff though... If you have a nvidia module installed from Nvidia's install script from their website it will goof up the install if you mix it with nvidia module aviable from non-free debian repositories. So use either or, don't mix. I recommend using the installer from the Nvidia's website bacause it's newest. The downside is that you have reinstall it everytime X gets updated.

Also if you need 'restricted formats' that aren't normally aviable thru Debian's official channels check out Apt-get.org. Or you need backports from unstable/testing to stable... It has a search engine to show the contents of non-official debian repositories.

For instance a search for libdvdcss2 for i386 and 'all' turns up
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ stable main
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ testing main
deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main

As a possible canadate. Be aware though that these don't go thru the same quality control that regular Debian stuff does.

Also if your running Mythtv and want to do it on Debian check out:
http://dijkstra.csh.rit.edu/~mdz/debian ... le/mythtv/

For instructions on how to use his repository.


Note that if you want to use Unstable it's going thru a big C++ ABI transition from GCC 3.x series to GCC 4.0 since 4.0 is the default compiler. This has been going on for some time and seems like it's ending completion but if your a KDE user (which is all C++) that it may be a while before everything is easily updatable agian.


So I hope something in their helps someone. It's some of the Debian things that I've picked up on that has helped me alot.

Thankyou for the Linux Link Tech Show. It's very good.

Thanks for the info, wajig sounds very cool. Ill probly try it out soon.

wajig is way cool thanks for the info I have been using it since this weekend to install stuff and it is very easy to learn.

Now I am using wajig on Ubuntu.

never thought I would use both wajig and Ubuntu in the same sentence.
there is a joke there somewhere.