Excruciating story about Extracting a single file from a PKG

tunasashimi · 02-06-2007, 07:47 AM

Hi

I just installed ubuntu, yesterday. My yearly look at Linux. Looks nice.... boy, I'm getting a little frustrated customising things...

I installed a package which installed some apache2 packages as subrequirements. Wow, worked wonderfully. Then I tweaked apache's config files a bit, and oops, I copied a symlink to a symlink and deleted my wonderful default template, as installed from the pkg.

Now I have two options, right? Extract the file from the original PKG - or uninstall an reinstall.

So, I spend about 30 minutes looking for the PKGs. Can't find them. Back to synaptic, then.... Uninstall; Go. Reinstall the package that originally installed apache. Go. Oops... all of a sudden 3 extra packages are installed, and a completely different webserver running on Erlang. Crap! I didn't change nor update my repositories!

Uninstall erlang and its webserver and another erlang lib. Reinstall the original package. Bah! It didn't reinstall the file I deleted from apache

Maybe if I delete the whole apache config directory and reinstall the apache packages. Delete. Reinstall.

Nope... just creates the tree, and leaves the directories empty

Maybe if I completely uninstall all the packages and reinstall them.

Another hour or two later. Nope. DARN!

Questions:

1) Where does synaptic put it's PKG's?
2) Is a PKG a simple tar.gz or something that I can extract something from with Midnight Commander?
3) Why did reinstalling the packages not reinstall the config files required?
4) What is the correct way to do this?

99) c) Should I be angry at the Apache guys for having such a flood of completely useless docs? All we need are easily accessible examples!!!!

Thank you very much to anyone able to answer some of my questions!

tunasashimi · 02-06-2007, 08:08 AM

So, as usual, I'll answer my own questions:

1) locate -r deb$ reveals:
/var/cache/apt/archives/..................

And the extension is

"deb" and not pkg

2) yes, press enter on it in Midnight Commander, and copy files out ke it's a subdirectorye. (Letters mixed up because UBUNTU doesnt know how to prioritise takss! Slugggggish) Doing an install in backgroudn....

3) Some config file protection policy? I came across a .info file that lists all the config files.

*** WHAT IS THE CORRECT PROCEDURE to update config files in debian? ***

(I'm assuming ubuntu is mostly debian...)

99) c) yes, and no.

My pleasure