Porteus

Hi all
I'm a Mint user but needed a super-lightweight distro to run on my very small HDD-netbook, hence being here...
I have searched both the forums and the web generally and am still stumped. Light as it is, I do want to add a couple of programs/search for what's out there, but each time I try and run USM/PPM I get the error message

'You need the following programs to continue : installpkg removepkg'. Is there a quick way to do this via terminal, allowing me to search by type/name for new programs ?

Many thanks in advance

Normally you have to run as root in order to use USM. If running as sudo you need to add to your path. At command prompt: PATH+=:/sbin.

If you are talking about installing the downloaded packages, the best thing is to have them transformed into modules (.xzm) at the same time that you download them (with the usm gui, command line usm does not have this option). This way there will be no need to install packages with installpkg removepkg if you have choosen within usm package manager to transform .txz to .xzm packages into modules. For the packages to become functional you will have transfer these into a dedicated folder which is /porteus/modules folder and reboot if there are many, or simply activate them one by one (installing them) by double clicking on them or using the right click contextual menu.

francois wrote:If you are talking about installing the downloaded packages, the best thing is to have them transformed into modules (.xzm) at the same time that you download them (with the usm gui, command line usm does not have this option).

It does though, when the number of packages pulled in as dependencies >= 1, which seems to be a bit of an inconsistency.

If you are talking about installing the downloaded packages, the best thing is to have them transformed into modules (.xzm) at the same time that you download them (with the usm gui, command line usm does not have this option). This way there will be no need to install packages with installpkg removepkg if you have choosen within usm package manager to transform .txz to .xzm packages into modules. For the packages to become functional you will have transfer these into a dedicated folder which is /porteus/modules folder and reboot if there are many, or simply activate them one by one (installing them) by double clicking on them or using the right click contextual menu.

I was given a recommendation (as a Porteus n00B) from someone more knowledgable than me to rather copy any required Slackware disksets locally from <slackware mirror>/slackware/slackware-14.1/slackware/<diskset> and then use installpkg or pkgtool on the locally-stored diskset pkg's instead of using the USM GUI and/or transforming them into .xzm modules.

Guess that YMMV??

goossbears wrote:given a recommendation (as a Porteus n00B) from someone more knowledgable than me to rather copy any required Slackware disksets locally from <slackware mirror>/slackware/slackware-14.1/slackware/<diskset> and then use installpkg or pkgtool on the locally-stored diskset pkg's instead of using the USM GUI and/or transforming them into .xzm modules.

Well, IMHO that does seem to defeat the whole purpose of Porteus

^
for the application of system-relevant security patches it is acceptable.
(openssl,bash etc.) imo

@goossbear:
What about asking your more knowledgeable friend and providing us with the solution?

@goossbear:
What about asking your more knowledgeable friend and providing us with the solution?

I myself have more familiarity with the Debian-based distros' dependency-checking high-level apt tools (apt-get, aptitude, synaptic), and its non-dependency-checking low-level dpkg which all act upon .deb pkgs.
Porteus's USM is apparently "supposed to be"(?) similar to Debian's dependency-checking high-level apt tools. Native Slackware's non-dependency-checking low-level pkg-mgmt tool is pkgtool and it acts upon .txz pkgs.
From using Salix and reading up on its package management from http://guide.salixos.org/31PackageManagement.html, slapt-get and slapt-src (using SlackBuilds) are also similar to Debian's dependency-checking high-level apt tools.

So using USM/slapt- tools ---> pkgtool for Porteus/Slackware is roughly comparable to using apt tools ---> dpkg for Debian-based distros. Perhaps this is obvious to all?
In any case, a possible "solution" from my more knowledgeable friend is now in the thread 'Missing dependencies from USM?(2)' in the Community effort forum, link http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=4537

I will add here what I added to the other thread. There shouldn't be many packages that don't have dependencies resolved through USM. If there are packages that don't resolve then report them in the USM bugs thread and I will add them to the extras file. Usually this will be python deps. I also see no point for downloading an entire slackware repository locally to hunt for dependencies manually. USM spans across 5 slackware repositories and it also searches for individual libraries. You can read the man page for more information on functionality.
The above line will search for the mother package of this library which you can then download using the 'g' switch.

I will add here what I added to the other thread....

That "other thread" is linked at http://forum.porteus.org/viewtopic.php?f=75&t=4537, and one of the recent entries there tries to tie in most of the previous comments in this 'Newbie questions' thread.