[Wylug-help] Debian help needed

[Anne Wilson]

On Sunday 06 April 2008 22:05, Smylers wrote:
>
> I've never used Xandros, but presuming it's sufficiently like Debian I'd
> recommend using bare command-line tools for this -- that way you have
> full control over exactly what's been run and can see precisely which
> command is generating which error message (and then can post them here
> if you don't understand).
>
> Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and make sure it includes the repository URLs
> you were given.
>
I deleted the two debian directories I had already added, then added new ones 
from the mirror list that Jim pointed me to.  Unfortunately that still left 
me with piles of 'Couldn't stat source package list' messages.

> Then try doing:
>
>   $ sudo apt-get install aspell ispell
>
> > If I download packages from http://tinyurl.com/5s7suu and
> > http://tinyurl.com/5mnguw is there a way to do a local install?
>
> If you have a local .deb file then you may be able to install it with
> something like:
>
>   $ sudo dpkg -i ispell_3.1.20.0-4.3_i386.deb
>
> However that will only work if all of that packages' dependencies are
> already installed; apt-get would pull in all the dependencies for you,
> so it's better to try that first.
>
This turned out to be the way to go.  I had read the dependency list on the 
debian pages and checked that I had suitable ones.  The only worry was in 
case there was a hard-coded version requirement rather than a => one, but in 
this case there doesn't seem to be.  The two packages and their dictionaries 
installed easily, and spell-checking appears to be working in kmail.

It only remains to run it a few times and make sure that nothing snarls up, 
then put those packages on my web-space and show the OP how to use them 
(explaining why you 'shouldn't do this at home' :-))

Thanks to all who helped.

Anne