Baslinux mailing list

[Neo Sze Wee <neoszewee AT gmx.net>]

On Sun, May 04, 2003 at 10:20:41AM -0400, keesan2 AT cyberspace.org wrote:
> On Sun, 4 May 2003 qwms-avib AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:
> 
> This explains why I do not have zless.  Do you want to include binutils in
> the files needed to install to hard drive?   Apart from ar I have not run
> into anything I need in that package.  (Maybe ar would work if I installed
> the whole package as it has a dependency). 

These are all the things that will be install if you do a normal
install. BL and similar distributions have only the minimal and it is up
to you to find the rest. 

> 
> Do I need to leave a mouse plugged into Com1 in order to start X?
> My only two X programs (Opera and flwriter) don't need a mouse.
> (The mouse has been handy to put under the monitor to tip it forward).
> 
> I think I read that the Slackware .tgz format is just an ordinary archive,
> and Debian packages this in one more layer with control files, which is
> why it worked to open the .deb package with ar and then just use one of
> the three resulting files (data.tar.gz) the same way as a Slackware
> package.

The simplicity of slackware.

> 
> Since I did not rename data.tar.gz to photopc.gz before running installpkg
> I now have in /var/log/packages, along with seejpeg and screen39, the
> file data.tar.gz which contains info about the location of files from
> photopc.  I renamed this file to photopc and pkgtool lists it that way
> now.
> 
> Is there some equally easy way to unpackage rpm files without needing to
> download mc which expands to 6M, or the 1M rpm package for slackware?

Yes. Search for 'disrpm' in google. This is a script that make uses of a
few very simple tool to extract the compessed archive from another type
of file. The tools required are dd, sed and file. The dd and sed in BL
might not work so you have to find the full version.

> I would like to be able to get programs off the SuSE 6.2 and Caldera 2.4
> CDs (same kernel and library).  For instance binutils.
> 
> 

Some people are paronoidal.

> or slower?  What does it even mean for a program which extracts text from
> a file to be secure?  Are there encrypted pdf files that we need to be
> able to extract from?
>