apt-get update

[Giles Orr]

Hi Merv (and TLUG).

On 8/27/06, Merv Curley <mervc-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> A friend of mine has spent an hour on dialup doing the above.  When he started
> adept he had a list of new packages and upgrades to installed packages.
>
> When he started adept the next day it only showed installed packages.  I
> assume that what he got from the update is in a file somewhere on his
> computer?
>
> I've never had this happen, but this guy, a newbie, is forever doing something
> and causing him and me, problems.  Me cuz I'm supposed to have these answers
> and a lot of the time I am clueless.

There are several programs that can be used to work with the packages
on a Debian-based system.  The most commonly used is "apt-get".  I
tend to use "aptitude", which shares a lot of common command line
switches.  These common command line switches have a different
behaviour than similar sounding things with "yum" under FC, which can
cause confusion.  "aptitude update" or "apt-get update" doesn't
install any packages: it checks the repositories to get information,
primarily lists of new versions of software that are available.
That's all.  You should always run it before you try to install any
software.  The command I'm guessing you're looking for is "apt-get
upgrade" which looks at your system and upgrades any packages that you
have that are older than what's available.  "yum update" on an FC
system is the same as "apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade" on a Debian
system.  Be warned that running "upgrade" over dialup is an extremely
long process - you can be looking at _days_ if your system decides
Open Office is in need of an upgrade.  Consider doing single
security-critical packages by hand.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml