[Gllug] Finding the best options in Debian

['lesleyb']

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 10:10:46PM +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
> Hello,
>    I am trying to find the best combination of ZoneMinder, package
> dependencies, and desktop on a dedicated machine. In theory a desktop is not
> a dependency as long as the output web pages can be monitored somewhere,
> although it may be needed in some circumstances. There is a fairly long list
> of package dependecies, although some may be met by any one from a small
> number, while some of those listed may not be used together. One way would
> be to obtain (from where?) the huge list of packages in each desktop variety
> and then compare with the list from zoneminder, but is there another way?
>    I am starting by installing Debian, then ZoneMinder
> 

I don't know quite how you plan to install Debian, but I believe there 
is a point in the graphical install process where you can select different 
machine functionality, e.g web-server, desktop.  You might want to at least
select X11 and a window manager and then install zoneminder.

The command 'aptitude show <package-name>' , run for each zoneminder 
dependency, will show which are optional and not installed after your basic
Debian installation.

Just playing with your proposition, I checked some kde dependencies.  kde 
itself is marked as a dummy package with kde-standard being the recommended 
package for new installs.   Drilling down the kde-standard and kdemultimedia
meta-packages, I found dragonplayer is dependent on libstdc++6 of 
v. >= 4.1.1 .

Zoneminder has a similar dependency on libstdc++6 version >= 4.1.1 but
libdirac-encoder0, a dependency of zoneminder,  itself has a dependency 
on libstdc++6 >= version 4.4.0. 

In Debian, zoneminder has not been rebuilt against libstdc++6 since 
v. 4.1.1 and neither has dragonplayer in the kdemultimedia meta-package 
but libdirac-encoder0 was last built against v4.4.0 of libstdc++6.  
Presumably libdirac-encoder0 needed some of the functionality that had 
been added/fixed/improved in v 4.4.0.

The good news is, if the API provided by libstdc++6 has changed between 
versions 4.1.1 and 4.4.0 so much that zoneminder (and any other packages 
using libstdc++6 >=v4.1.1) couldn't use v 4.4.0 then libstdc++6 v 4.4.0 
would have a different soname and binary package name.  

The current stable version of libstdc++6 stands at 4.4.5-8 and it's still
the same name. 

If you're using stable, the 4.4.5 version of libstdc++6 will be downloaded 
and will satisfy all dependencies mentioned above.

On my system, zoneminder lists alternatives such as php5 | php4 
and libavformat52 (>= 4:0.5.1-1) | libavformat-extra-52 .  That appears 
to means you'll install either php4 or php5, libavformat52 or 
libavformat-extra-52 etc.  when you install zoneminder.  

There is no php4 on the stable release so when you pull down zoneminder, 
you'll also be pulling down php5.  When you draw down libstdc++6, you'll 
be pulling down v 4.4.5.

If you feel particularly defensive about the zoneminder package, drill
down through that package, check for any conflicts e.g. libdirac-encoder0 
conflicts with libdirac0 and libdirac0c2a and actually replaces them.  
Neither of the latter packages exist on the stable release so they can't 
be pulled down by anything in the stable release.   So there won't be a 
conflict from the libdirac family in a new installation.  

You might find some of the conflicting packages both exist in the 
release of your choice and in this case I would suggest recording those 
conflicts and resolving then by keeping the zoneminder options and 
either find a desktop/window manager that doesn't conflict or deal 
with the conflict appropriately and leave the desktop/window manager 
component uninstalled.

The installation process should prompt for decisions in conflicting
situations.

I hope this makes things a bit clearer for your situation.

Regards

Lesley
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