When I use the Remove option of the newest (Current as of 24jan05, pkgname="pkgtools-10.1.0-i486-2.tgz") version of pkgtool, I get this error:

"Error: Expected at least 6 tokens for --menu, have 5. Use --help to list options."

A long list of filenames scrolls by, and then I get the "Package has been removed" message that normally follows a successful package removal. This is doubly strange since the script didn't even permit me to select a package *for* removal.

When I use the View option of the new pkgtool, I get this error:

"Error: Expected at least 7 tokens for --menu, have 6. Use --help to list options."

Again, I get along list of filenames, and no viewable package content.

The previous version of pkgtools (Current as of 04nov04, pkgname="pkgtools-10.1.0-i486-1.tgz"), this doesn't happen.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction? I tried comparing the old and new script in /sbin/pkgtool, but nothing jumped off the page. I saw that the "ls" command was used slightly differently, so I tried undoing all my ls-related aliases. However, that didn't change things. Yes, I did source the config files after editing them.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I wrote one of the maintainers of pkgtools, and he quickly analyzed the problem by looking atthe files in my /var/log/packages/ directory. I have a number of "home-made" packages that I compiled from source and which I used checkinstall to install. When checkinstall would ask for a package description, I would write a few things that were meaningful to me -- but which apparently do *not* follow the Slackware convention for describing packages (look at a description of an official package and you'll see an example).

Apparently the new pkgtool script is less tolerant of this sort of deviation than the older versions were. I think a fix is in the offing, but, meanwhile, I'm going to set about cleaning up my package descriptions so that they conform. I don't want to lose package utility functionality and I trust the judgment of those Slackers who've gone before me.

If checkinstall includes instructions for properly naming a package, I didn't see them. However, I'm sure this is well documented elsewhere and I just missed it.

A word to the wise ... from one who is less so.

Jim Hawkins, one of the pkgtools maintainer-developers, was right on target with his diagnosis of my pkgtool problem.

If you have non-standard package descriptions in your /var/log/packages/ subdirectory, it is very likely that the latest version of pkgtools won't work properly, at least pending a fix from Jim. The version in question is pkgtools-10.1.0-i486-2.tgz.

The Slackware standard requires exactly 11 lines of information beginning with the first line following the "PACKAGE DESCRIPTION:" line. Each of these 11 lines should begin with the package name followed by a colon. For example:

Probably everybody knows this but me. But now I know, because I have just finished hand-editing 77 package descriptions to conform to the Slackware standard.

I had compiled numerous packages from source, using checkinstall to install. When checkinstall would prompt me for a package description, I should have followed the Slackware standard as above. I didn't, which caused pkgtool to break.

Using a text editor, I edited all my non-standard package descriptions within the files from /var/log/packages/, making them all conform to the Slackware standard. After doing that, the new, improved pkgtool utility works beautifully -- and, as everyone is saying, much more quickly.

Maybe this will help somebody else who was, um, slack with his or her package descriptions.

Thanks to Jim for pointing this out and not making me feel at all like a dummy. Good on ya, Jim.

Moral: Don't be slack, be Slack.

Thanks for this info

Please see this thread:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=282998

Jim