-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Please wrap your lines at about 72 or 76 characters. Paragraphs with no linebreaks cause trouble for the mailers many of us use.
On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Randy M.Kaplan wrote: > I am trying to understand how to use dselect to install packages. When > I start dselect and select the "select" option, the list I get looks > like there are many packages that will be installed - for example, all > of the required packages. > > Since these have already been installed (as part of the initial > install of the OS), how to I tell dselect that I only want to install > a particular package (in this case XFree86). It looks to me that if I > run dselect the way it apprears that all of the packages marked for > installation will be installed, including the one I want installed. Is > this true? What am I missing? You're misinterpreting the display. The three stars indicate (from left to right) that the package is currently installed, that it was marked for install when you entered the screen, and that it should remain installed. Occasionally you'll see a character to the right of these three symbols indicating an error status. Read the help (press '?') for more information on this. There's three basic headings a *** package can be under: "--- Up to date installed packages ---", "--- Updated packages (newer version is available) ---", and "--- Obsolete and local packages present on system - ---". If it's under 'updated', that means a newer version is available. 'Obsolete' means that it's not on any of the Debian mirrors you told it to check. 'Up to date' means that you have the newest version available. A package marked for installation will have either '-' or '_' as the leftmost of those three characters, and '*' as the rightmost. A package marked for uninstallation will have '*' as the leftmost and '-' or '_' as the rightmost. A package that is installed and should stay installed will have '*' as it's left and right characters. A package that isn't installed and should not be installed will have '_' or '-' for left and right characters. '-' in all cases means that config files are still on the system (so you don't have to modify them anew if you reinstall the package), while '_' means that config files have been removed. The center character always indicates the state of the rightmost character when you first entered the selection screen, in case you want to reset your changes (using the 'R' option, perhaps). Sorry if this message is a bit confusing, dselect is a rather complex program. But if you read the help, and the docs on the Debian website, you should be ok. - -- finger for PGP public key. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBN/lV+77M/9WKZLW5AQGJqAP+P4L8nQyU8zBd1Uncc2FhstFLtmjHlQsU zSli0jhzho4ujJymuklECQ8v/t9Y+NpWc2GcwaWCQSl5Zz2JztX82hxHYe4yP1xJ 2mY2dr9iE1Yvnv7+FfUwOmDrFGejOcGdlx5glPHW2qtHx7s1c8Ac+Li6wtMQ1zId NLjB7TVx3DU= =4CDS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
