I was reading the following to learn about apt use. I made my /root/debs dir successfully. But I got lost in the "package's control file"
- How do I modify this definitions on this file that I don't know where is or if I have to created?
- What is an override file and where I have to put it?
- How do I use /dev/null to call dpkg-scanpackages?

I had been googling about installing things but some stuff is not in Synaptic (like win32codecs), although I found .deb files.

I respectfully ask for help. I'm trying to learn.
Thanks.


"2.2 How to use APT locally

Sometimes you have lots of packages .deb that you would like to use APT to install so that the dependencies would be automatically solved.

To do that create a directory and put the .debs you want to index in it . For example:

# mkdir /root/debs

You may modify the definitions set on the package's control file directly for your repository using an override file. Inside this file you may want to define some options to override the ones that come with the package. It looks like follows:

package priority section

package is the name of the package, priority is low, medium or high and section is the section to which it belongs. The file name does not matter, you'll have to pass it as an argument for dpkg-scanpackages later. If you do not want to write an override file, just use /dev/null. when calling dpkg-scanpackages.

Still in the /root directory do:

# dpkg-scanpackages debs file | gzip > debs/Packages.gz

In the above line, file is the override file, the command generates a file Packages.gz that contains various information about the packages, which are used by APT. To use the packages, finally, add:

deb file:/root debs/

After that just use the APT commands as usual. You may also generate a sources repository. To do that use the same procedure, but remember that you need to have the files .orig.tar.gz, .dsc and .diff.gz in the directory and you have to use Sources.gz instead of Packages.gz. The program used is also different. It is dpkg-scansources. The command line will look like this:

# dpkg-scansources debs | gzip > debs/Sources.gz

Notice that dpkg-scansources doesn't need an override file. The sources.list's line is:

deb-src file:/root debs/"

if your trying to add things like w32codec,flash,realplayer,java??Easier to just add a etch repo from http://debian-multimedia.org/ to your apt sources list.

Hi, I did what you suggested, went to debian-multimedia.org. I copy-paste this
in my /etc/apt/sources.list, saved and run apt-get update on root terminal and this happened:

I also did it with:

but same results.

I do appreciate any more suggestions about how to fix this.
Thanks

Ack now how'd I manage that double post..

aptitude install debian-multimedia-keyring

Once you install the gpg key for the repository that warning will go away.

Since Debian etch was released the developers recommend you use aptitude rather than apt-get for various reasons. The two tools operate almost identically from the command line. http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/.../rn01re01.html




There is no reason to setup a local apt repository, unless you are planning to update numerous Debian machines on your internal network and wish to manage the updates locally and save internet bandwidth. For one or two machines it's really not worth the effort.

WOW....

Thanks for blowing a lot of clouds from my head.

I took a Linux online course from Linux.org (Beginners) and I know it is from 2005 but I never thought about checking changes in some commands. Anyway a discovered Debian Wiki http://wiki.debian.org/ recently and some other places I have to check out, starting with http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/.../rn01re01.html

I did what you suggest:

and it worked fine.

Thanks again.