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| DATE | 2004-05-14 |
| FROM | From: "Inker, Evan"
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Help File Library: Slackware: The Quick and Dirty Quide to Packag es
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Subject: [hangout] Help File Library: Slackware: The Quick and Dirty Quide to Packag es
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Help File Library: Slackware: The Quick and Dirty Quide to Packages
http://www.justlinux.com/nhf/Distribution_Specific/Slackware_Linux/Slackware
__The_Quick_and_Dirty_Quide_to_Packages.html
Written By: X_console
Slackware Linux makes use of Slackware packages for easy installation, and
removal of user installed software. Slackware packages have a .tgz extension
and can be obtained from the Slackware home site at
http://www.slackware.com, as well as various other FTP sites that have them.
Slackware packages contain binary files, meaning that there is no need to
build the software from source. This will be, as the title says, a quick and
dirty guide. I will explain the tools that the you will most likely use to
install, remove, and create Slackware packages. I will not go into detail
however, of the many options available in the tools we will be using. I
think the manual pages for them are easy enough to read, and you probably
will not be using all the options anyway.
THE TOOLS
The following are the tools you will most likely be using to deal with
manipulating Slackware packages:
pkgtool
installpkg
removepkg
upgradepkg
makepkg
explodepkg
We will be covering the basics of using these tools. Check your system to
make sure you have them. Older versions of Slackware may not have upgradepkg
in them. At this time of writing, it is available at the Slackware homesite
as hdsetup.tgz. If you do not have upgradepkg in your system, download it
and do the following:
explodpkg hdsetup.tgz
cp sbin/upgradepkg /sbin
cp usr/man/man8/upgradepkg.8.gz /usr/man/man8
The following sections will now explain what each tool is used for, and how
they are used.
pkgtool
pkgtool is a graphical program that allows you to manipulate the
installation and removal of Slackware packages. It carries a few command
line options used during the initial Slackware Linux setup. You will not
need to use these command line options. pkgtool is easy enough to use. There
are six menu options available in the main menu, with a short description of
what each option does. I think this is easy enough to understand and
requires no explanation. The one option you may be interested in is the View
option. This option allows you to view the contents of a package, as well as
a description of what the package does and/or contains.
installpkg
installpkg installs Slackware packages just like pkgtool does, except it
does it on the fly without you needing to choose from menus. The basic usage
command is:
installpkg foo.tgz
This command will install foo.tgz into your system. However, newer files in
the package will overwrite older files existing on your system. You will
want to make note of what files will be installed on your system. This can
be done by passing the -warn option. With the -warn option, installpkg will
generate a report on what files will be installed, and you can then
cross-reference to see if you have any existing files already on your
system. Here's a short example:
installpkg -warn foo.tgz
Scanning the contents of foo.tgz...
The following files will be overwritten when installing this package.
Be sure they aren't important before you install this package:
-rwxr-xr-x root/root 1242 1999-06-05 12:34 usr/local/bin/foo
-rw-r--r-- root/root 120 1999-06-05 12:34 usr/local/etc/foorc
You've been warned.
I recommend that you always use the -warn option before installing any
package. Once you are sure you know what is being installed, you can go
ahead and install the package.
removepkg
removepkg removes an already installed package on the system. Like
installpkg, this feature is also available by using pkgtool, except that
this is run without a menu interface. removepkg needs to be used in the
/var/log/packages directory. The syntax is:
removepkg foo
You need to be careful when using removepkg as it may delete a file you
wanted to keep. You will want to use the -warn option with removepkg before
actually removing a package. This can be done as follows:
removepkg -warn foo
Only warning... not actually removing any files.
Here's what would be removed (and left behind) if you
removed the package(s):
--> /usr/local/bin/foo
--> /usr/local/etc/foorc
Be sure you use the -warn option all the time before removing a package.
Removing the wrong package will cause you uncessesary headaches. Know what
you are removing before you remove it.
upgradepkg
upgradepkg will upgrade an already existing package installed in your
system. It does this by first installing the new package, and then removing
any files from the old package that are not in the new package. Keep that in
mind! If you need to keep any configuration files from the old package, be
sure to back them up. upgradepkg works in two ways. If you have installed
package foo.tgz and you want to upgrade it, and the new package is called
foo.tgz, then the command to upgrade is:
upgradepkg foo.tgz
Otherwise, if you installed the package foo.tgz and the upgraded package is
foo-2.0.tgz, then the command to upgrade is:
root# upgradepkg foo.tgz%foo-2.0.tgz
Notice the "%" symbol seperating both package names. This syntax is used
when the upgraded package has a different name from the currently installed
package. If the old and new packages both have the same name, just use the
first example's syntax.
makepkg
makepkg is used to create Slackware specific packages. In order to create a
Slackware package, you will need to have the binary files for the package
you want to create. Obviously this means you will need to either have the
binary files already available in your system, or you will have to build the
binary files from the source files. Here are the steps you need to follow to
create a Slackware package:
create a directory tree
copy all the files related to the package into the appropriate directories
in the directory tree.
run makepkg to create the Slackware package.
I would advice you to create a directory where you will keep your Slackware
packages. For instance, something like /slackpack. This is where you will
create your directory tree. /slackpack will simple contain the location on
where the files in the package you are creating will be installed. For
instance, foo.tgz will install the binary file foo in /usr/local/bin and a
configuration file foorc in /usr/local/etc. Therefore, /slackpack will
contain the following directories:
/slackpack/usr/local/bin
/slackpack/usr/local/etc
Understand? If not, look at it again and you will. The next step is to copy
all the files to the directory tree. So in this case, there are only two
files to foo.tgz, and they are foo and foorc. We then copy the files to
where they will be installed, in this case, /usr/local/bin and
/usr/local/etc respectively. When that is done with, we do the following:
cd /slackpack
makepkg foo.tgz
This will create a package called foo.tgz which contains the files foo and
foorc which will be installed in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/etc
respectively.
As you can probably see, you will need to hunt around for the files and then
to copy them to the created directory tree. An easier way to do this would
be to build the package from source, and then have the built binaries
installed into the directory tree. For instance, we have downloaded a source
package called foo.tar.gz. We have already created a directory /slackpack it
is currently empty. The first thing to do is to unpack the source file and
then to build the source:
./configure --prefix=/slackpack
make
make install
The line ./configure --prefix=/slackpack will cause make install to install
all packages into /slackpack while at the same time, building the directory
tree for you. So when you are done, just cd to /slackpack and run makepkg
from within it, and it will automatically build the package for you. If the
source package you build does not support the ./configure stage, then you
will have to build and find out where the files will be installed in.
Fortunately, most major source packages will require you to make use of the
./configure stage.
When you run makepkg two things will happen. First it will check to see if
there are any symbolic links in the package you are creating. If there are,
makepkg will recommend that a script be made and that all symbolic links are
deleted. Do it if you want to. Secondly, it will as you if you want to
change the permissions of the files to 755 and changing all ownerships to
root. Unless some of the files need to retain special permissions for
whatever reasons, go ahead and say yes to this question. Once you have
finished all of these steps, your Slackware package is ready.
explodepkg
explodepkg is used to extract the contents of a package to the current
directory. This is used mostly with makepkg. Basically if after you make a
package, and then decide to make modifications to it, you can use explodepkg
to unpack the package, modify it, and then rebuild it with makepkg.
Conclusion
As you have seen, the Slackware package managing system is extremely simple
to understand and to use. It is advisable that you learn how to use it, and
to create Slackware packages after building the binaries from the source
package. It will be easier to keep track of them and to upgrade and
uninstall them in future.
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