Organizing Linux Information!

While doing an upgrade on your Debian or Ubuntu system, if you ever encounter the following error message:
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1)

all you need to do is to rename that file to something else. For example:
# cd /var/lib/apt/
# mv extended_states extended_states.tmp
Now you can continue whatever you were doing with apt-get, aptitude or [...]

Purpose: In this blog post we will learn how to create your own local Debian like package repository so that you can use apt-get install commands to install packages just like the way you install from Debian repositories. Let’s say you have created your own customized Debian packages and you would like them to install [...]

So you would think that just removing a package from your Debian system would remove all the configuration files and other related files associated with that package, right? But that is not the case. There is a difference between “purging” and “removing” in Debian. As far as I understand, removing a package by the following [...]

Purpose: In this post we will learn how to build a Debian package (.deb) from source packages. You might be thinking why would I ever need to do that, right? Well most of the times you are right, you won’t require to build packages from source, but there will be situations sometimes when you will [...]

Purpose: Debian has a very powerful package management system called APT. Learning some useful commands can really unleash the true power and usefulness of this package management system. From time to time I will add commands and other tips and tricks that will be helpful to solve some issues and get work done faster. The [...]

Recently I ended up in a situation where I had to use an old version of watchdog package from Etch (4.0) on Debian Lenny (5.0) because of a bug in Lenny’s version.
First you need to uninstall the current version  (5.4-10) of  watchdog package:
apt-get purge watchdog
Download the watchdog package from Etch and install it.
# wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/w/watchdog/watchdog_5.2.6-6_i386.deb
# [...]