When I say "control system" I mean easy to search, install, upgrade,
uninstall.

I tried FreeBSD package system. I think it is better than its port system,
because it is quite easy to do pkg_delete, or pkg_add to the most recent
stable.

I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or HTTPD.

What about CentOS's package system? Do they use RPM? I heard it is very bad.

What about Gentoo? My VMware can not start the installation, so I did not
try it.

nntp wrote:

> I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
> them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or HTTPD.

Did you use the 'find' or 'whereis' commands?

> What about CentOS's package system? Do they use RPM? I heard it is very bad.

CentOS uses RPM and no, it's not as bad as many try to make it to look. It
uses a quite strict check on what you install/upgrade and will keep you system
to have only working installations as long as you don't use the --nodeps and
--force options.


> What about Gentoo? My VMware can not start the installation, so I did not
> try it.

Gentoos portage system, a bit similar to the BSD systems, will allow you to
break your system, but you will have access to a quite large amount of
packages, but will take a good while to install as everything is usually built
from source.
Gentoo don't have any installation program, you have to install it manually,
read the documentation at www.gentoo.org.

Keep in mind that the performance in VMware will be slower than you run
Gnu/Linux directly on your hardware. If you have to continue to use the virus
infested environment, then you better look at cygwin, which gives you quite a
lot of the Gnu/Linux world to your Microsoft environment.



//Aho

In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc nntp <nt@alexa.com> wrote:
> I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
> them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or HTTPD.

What do you mean by "I can not find them in shell"? Do you mean you
don't find the installed binaries? Try 'locate apache | grep sbin' and
'locate php | grep bin' or which php.

--
Saludos,
Ángel

> In comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc nntp <nt@alexa.com> wrote:
> > I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
> > them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or
HTTPD.
>
> What do you mean by "I can not find them in shell"? Do you mean you
> don't find the installed binaries? Try 'locate apache | grep sbin' and
> 'locate php | grep bin' or which php.
>
> --

All newly installed packages are not found. In aptiude, all newly installed
have this mark : "i A"
I think i means installed, what is the A thing?

nntp wrote:
> When I say "control system" I mean easy to search, install, upgrade,
> uninstall.
>
> I tried FreeBSD package system. I think it is better than its port system,
> because it is quite easy to do pkg_delete, or pkg_add to the most recent
> stable.

Packages are just precompiled ports on FreeBSD. Any port you install is
listed in the package database just as a binary package would be.
pkg_info, pkg_delete work on installed ports. The only advantage to
packages over ports is no wait on comiling. This can be great for
things like openoffice, xorg, mozilla, etc. Ports, however, let you
pick compile-time options like whether you want SSL support included in
your application and other useful things that you cannot choose when
installing binary packages.

Ports also does an excellent job of upgrading (make deinstall reinstall,
or portupgrade tool) and keeping track of dependencies, old config
files, etc.

I find FreeBSD package management to be elegantly simple, flexible, and
time saving in my system administration experience. Unfortunately, I
cannot really compare it to most linux package management tools, except
to say that i greatly prefer it to RPM. No experience with deb's.

Gentoo's portage is like a clone of BSD ports trees, allowing linux
users the same ability to quickly compile (well, quick time at keyboard,
the compile may take a while) an app and all its dependencies on your
local system without bothering to waste time on checking what order to
install dependencies, what ./configure arguments are needed, etc.
Gentoo users I've known seem pretty happy with it.

>
> I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
> them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or HTTPD.

This is usually OS specific. Most package management systems will let
you see what files were installed by a package. For instance, on
FreeBSD, pkg_info -L packagename will list all files it installed. Some
OS's put things in weird places like /var/http/ and since almost any
app's ./configure could have it install various components to different
locations, one should find a way to check where things are installed on
their system, and get a feel for the basic hier the package system uses.

On FreeBSD, for instance, I can expect by now that any package I install
will put everything in /usr/local (unless maybe qmail still tries
/var/qmail), I can expect config files in /usr/local/etc, I can expect
various shared stuff like vim syntax files in /usr/local/share, I can
expect a startup script for any daemon I install in
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/, etc. And if I can't find what I'm looking for,
pkg_info -L comes to the rescue.

Lots of packages may be installed somewhere that's not in your path.
Lots of packages will never need to be in the path, so long as startup
scripts properly run the daemon.

Find out how to see the list of files a package installs, and you will
never have to rely upon it being installed to your path to start using
it right away.


> What about CentOS's package system? Do they use RPM? I heard it is very bad.

No clue about Cent, but my redhat rpm experience was a headache.


> What about Gentoo? My VMware can not start the installation, so I did not
> try it.

aside from what i said about portage concepts above, i have no clue.

nntp got up from the bar and shouted: :
> When I say "control system" I mean easy to search, install, upgrade,
> uninstall.
>
> I tried FreeBSD package system. I think it is better than its port system,
> because it is quite easy to do pkg_delete, or pkg_add to the most recent
> stable.
>
> I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
> them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or HTTPD.
>
> What about CentOS's package system? Do they use RPM? I heard it is very bad.
>
> What about Gentoo? My VMware can not start the installation, so I did not
> try it.
>
>

I used to think that Gentoo had the best all round system, and
technically it still has, but the stable branch has so much unstable
rubbish in it, it's beyond belief. Whilst a system with so many
pacakges is never going to be 100% stable, you would think they would
take extra care over the popular packages before making them stable
(they should be able to get stats from the package servers, so to what
determines a "popular" package).

Perhaps they need several levels of stablility, a "super-stable" line of
packages.

If only they sorted it out, Gentoos Portage systems got real potential...

nntp wrote:

> When I say "control system" I mean easy to search, install, upgrade,
> uninstall.

*SNIPPED*

> I did Debian aptitude, I was able to install package, but I can not find
> them in shell. I installed PHP and Apache, but I can not find PHP or
> HTTPD.

What's available?
apt-cache search <keyword/package-name>

Install something:
apt-get install <package>

Upgrade stuff:
apt-get upgrade

Upgrade everything and remove/install conflicts/dependencies as required:
apt-get dist-upgrade

See if something is installed:
dpkg -l <package>

See where files from a package ended up (you may want to pipe this through
less):
dpkg -L <package>

Remove something but leave the configs intact:
apt-get remove <package>

Remove something completely (leave no trace):
apt-get remove --purge <package>

Remember that "apt" and "aptitude" (and other GUI/X-based tools) are
front-ends to the Debian package system, dpkg.

Is Debian's package system superior to all others? In some ways yes, in
others, no. But for my money, it's the best Linux package system
available. YMMV.

> What about CentOS's package system? Do they use RPM? I heard it is very
> bad.

Yes, CentOS is an RPM-based system derived directly from Red Hat Enterprise
Linux.

RPM is a lot better than it used to be. The "historical" gripe about RPM was
it's lack of tools for automatic dependency resolution. Many solutions are
now available for this including yum (CentOS/Fedora/etc), urpmi (Mandriva),
yast (SuSE) or even apt-rpm which is an "apt" front-end for RPM systems
with all the "apt-get" goodness that's native on Debian. With apt-rpm the
advantage/difference between deb-based systems over RPM-based is really a
matter of preference IMHO.

Cheers,

James
--
To be wise, the only thing you really need to know is when to say
"I don't know."