I created a binary package with this command:
dpkg-deb --build -z9 -Zlzma $(DEB_SRC_DIR) $(DEB_DEST_DIR)
and install it on my Ubuntu 12.04 with this command:
sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package
The contents of the package I think are irrelevant.
Despite the sudo command the files in the installation directory belong to the current user and not to root as I expected.
How can I fix that?
Try to run the dpkg-deb command with fakeroot:
`fakeroot dpkg-deb ...`
(This will only help if the files in the source directory already have the correct ownership, which they probably dont. The problem you're actually trying to solve here, is to create an archive with files in it that belong to user root, which is where fakeroot theoretically helps.)
Let me say though, that what you are doing is not the best way for creating a binary package (far from it).
Instead, create a debian/ directory with dh_make (from the dh-make package), and edit the control file and changelog accordingly. You also need a file debian/install that lists what files you are installing and where they should go. There are various guides on the net (and on Stack Overflow) that explain this process. For example, look at the Debian New Maintainers' Guide.
You can then use dpkg-buildpackage to create a real, standard-conforming Debian package with your files in a reproducible way.
dpkg-deb is a low-level tool for manipulating existing deb files; it's not meant to be used for package creation.
Related
I had downloaded sublime previously directly from the browser as tarball and saved it in a folder (and of course extracted it).But this way I wasn't able to make Sublime my default editor and it didn't feature as an application when I tried to open a text file with a right-click.I read somewhere installing sublime text 3 using commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sublime-text-installer
will solve my problem. So I directly deleted the Sublime_text3 folder saved in my Downloads directory and then used the given commands. But when I entered the 3rd command line I got the following error(just writing the error part):
subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:/var/cache/apt/archives/sublime-text-installer_3126-2~webupd8~1_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Can anyone explain why this error is coming and suggest a way to solve this problem? Also if anyone can tell how I can set Sublime as my default text editor from the tarball downloaded from the sublime text 3 website. Thanks in advance!
you can try this command to install Sublime Text using Snap Store..
sudo snap install sublime-text --classic
I'm not sure overall how to fix that error or what's going on (I use Slackware and not Ubuntu/Debian), but for a long while there have been official Sublime repositories several different Linux distributions, including Ubuntu/Debian.
It's highly recommended that you use those if you want to go the package route and not use existing solutions such as the one referenced in your question or in the other response here, if for no other reason than only the official repository is guaranteed to contain an unmodified version of Sublime. Additionally the official repositories are always updated on release, which may or may not happen in a timely manner in other repositories.
The links referenced above contain instructions on how to set up and use Sublime from those repositories, and if you have any issues a good place to ask is the forum.
One thing to note which isn't mentioned explicitly in the above pages is that to use the official repositories, you should:
Choose only one of them (stable or dev, noting that you need a license to run a dev version) and not add both repositories or things will not work as expected
Ensure that other repositories that you've added (such as the one in your question) are removed to make sure that the package system definitely pulls the correct package
There are a couple of ways to go if you want to install Sublime from the tarball version. The easiest way would be to extract it, then manually set up launcher shortcuts and so on based on what falls out. How exactly you would register it as a text editor in that case, I'm not entirely sure since I don't use the same distribution as you.
Presuming that the process would be easier if Sublime was installed in a way similar to how the package manager would do it, the tarball comes with a desktop file and icons, so the following steps can be used to (presumably) do what the package installer would do.
The proviso here is that although these steps work on my non-Ubuntu machine, I don't know if all of the referenced tools are installed by default on an Ubuntu system, so so more setup work may be involved.
Note also that the files in the tarball are not entirely self-consistent, which makes this a little bit more work.
First, you need to extract the tarball (replace tarball filename as appropriate for location and build):
cd /opt
sudo tar xvf ~/Downloads/sublime_text_3_build_3176_x64.tar.bz2
This creates the folder /opt/sublime_text_3/ and fills it with the contents of the tarball.
Next, you want to install the icons contained in the tarball. As far as I have been able to tell, the icons in the tarball aren't in the correct directory structure, requiring each to be copied into place individually. We also need to update the icon cache to ensure that the new icon is noticed by the system:
cd /usr/share/icons/hicolor/
sudo cp /opt/sublime_text_3/Icon/16x16/sublime-text.png 16x16/apps/
sudo cp /opt/sublime_text_3/Icon/32x32/sublime-text.png 32x32/apps/
sudo cp /opt/sublime_text_3/Icon/48x48/sublime-text.png 48x48/apps/
sudo cp /opt/sublime_text_3/Icon/128x128/sublime-text.png 128x128/apps/
sudo cp /opt/sublime_text_3/Icon/256x256/sublime-text.png 256x256/apps/
sudo gtk-update-icon-cache -f -t .
Now we want to install the sublime_text.desktop file that is in the tarball. Note however that like the icons, it seems kind of broken; the tarball extracts to sublime_text_3 but the desktop file assumes that the application is actually in /opt/sublime_text instead.
As such, you either need to rename the folder that was extracted to sublime_text to match what is in the desktop file, or edit the desktop file to make the path correct.
The following steps assume that we want to keep the folder the same and rewrite the desktop file. These commands will generate a new file named sublime_text_3.desktop with the changes.
cd /opt/sublime_text_3/
sed -e "s^/sublime_text/^/sublime_text_3/^" sublime_text.desktop | sudo tee sublime_text_3.desktop
Now you can install the desktop file. You do that with desktop-file-install, passing it the name of the desktop file. For accessing Sublime from the command line, you also want to set up a subl link to the installed copy of Sublime.
Adjust the paths as appropriate here if you decided to rename the folder instead of editing the desktop file:
sudo desktop-file-install sublime_text_3.desktop --rebuild-mime-info-cache
sudo ln -s /opt/sublime_text_3/sublime_text /usr/bin/subl
At this point Sublime should show up as an installed application, or at least it does in my Window Manager; if not, executing sudo update-desktop-database may help refresh it.
You can try this once. i hope it will help
wget https://download.sublimetext.com/files/sublime-text_build-4126_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i sublime-text_build-4126_amd64.deb
I've created packages previously by using a Makefile, the command "dh_make --createorig", then adjusting files in the debian folder generated and finally using the debuild command to generate the .deb. That workflow is simple and works for me, but I was told to adjust it a little in a way that you could build the project from the sources without requiring the orig files and I'm unsure how to do it, but according to this (https://askubuntu.com/questions/17508/how-to-have-debian-packaging-generate-two-packages-given-an-upstream-source-arch) and this structure (http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~andrewsomething/imagination/debian/files) there must be a way. In my case I would have a folder with the sources and all of that and then a debian folder (generated with dh_make) but I'm unsure on how to avoid the debuild command to ask for the .orig files or if I should be using some other command for this.
Sorry for the superlong question, I think I provided all the relevant information, but I can clarify if anything is fuzzy.
The difference is in the version number in the file debian/changelog.
If you use 1.2.3-1 it implied Debian build 1 of an upstream package 1.2.3 --- for which the build programs (dpkg-buildpackage and whichever wrappers on top) --- assume an .orig.tar.gz to exists.
But if you use 1.2.3 it will consider the package 'Debian native' and the archive is just a .tar.gz and not an .orig.tar.gz.
Now the choice should not be driven by your convenience alone. If this has an upstream source, use the first scheme. If not, the second can be fine. In the packages I maintain I have both but way more of the former.
If you want to create a Debian directory directly in the source package (ie you're packaging your own work, rather than from an upstream release) you could use the --native option to dh_make
I think the question was asked differently, it was somewhat clear that the project was upstream and it's probably not a good reason to change its format to native.
Currently I package some upstream python project, this exact same question came to my mind. Why isn't there any dh_* hook to overwrite in order to generate this origin tarball on the fly so you do not get bothered by:
This package has a Debian revision number but there does not seem to be
an appropriate original tar file or .orig directory in the parent directory;
for a start, I added a makefile to the project:
# Makefile
VERSION:=$(shell dpkg-parsechangelog -S Version | sed -rne 's,([^-\+]+)+(\+dfsg)*.*,\1,p'i)
UPSTREAM_PACKAGE:=click_${VERSION}.orig.tar.gz
dpkg:
tar cafv ../${UPSTREAM_PACKAGE} . --exclude debian --exclude .git
debuild -uc -us
clean:
rm -f ../${UPSTREAM_PACKAGE}
debuild clean
so a simple make clean dpkg was all it needed to build the package.
Now I think the question remains if someone has some bright idea how to insert the tar operation within the debian/rules so I could just call debuild -uc -us and it magically creates the orig tarball I would be awsome :)
I have a debian package that I built that contains a tar ball of the files, a control file, and a postinst file. Its built using dpkg-deb and it installs properly using dpkg.
The modification I would like to make is to have the installation directory of the files be determined at runtime based on an environment variable that will be set when dpkg -i is run on the deb file. I echo out the environment variable in the postinst script and I can see that its set properly.
My questions:
1) Is it possible to dynamically determine the installation directory at runtime?
2) If its possible how would I go about this? I have read about the rules file and the mypackage.install files but I don't know if either of these would allow me to accomplish this.
I could hack it by copying the files to the target location in the posinst script but I would prefer to do it the right way if possible.
Thanks in advance!
So this is what I found out about this problem over the past couple of weeks.
With prepackaged binaries you can't build a debian package with a destination directory dynamicall determined at runtime. I believe that this might be possible if installing a package that is built from source where you can set the install directory using configure. But in this case since these are embedded Ubuntu machines they don't have make so I didn't pursue such an option. I did work out a non traditional method (hack) for installing that did work. Since debian packages simply contain a tar ball relative to / simply build your package relative to a directory under /tmp. In the postinst script you can then determine where to copy the files from the archive into a permanent location.
I expected that after rebooting and the automatic deletion of the subdirectory under /tmp that dpkg might not know that the file package existed. This wasn't a problem. When I ran 'dpkg -l myapp' it showed as still installed. Updating the package using dpkg/apt-get also worked without a hitch.
What I did find is that if you attempted to remove the package using 'dpkg -r myapp' that dpkg would try and remove /tmp which wasn't good. However /tmp isn't easily removed so it never succeeded. Plus in our situation we never remove packages but instead simply upgrade them.
I eventually had to abandon the universal package due to code differences in the sources resulting in having to recompile per platform but I would have left it this way and it did work.
I tried using --instdir to change the install directory of the package and it does relocate the files but dpkg fails since the dpkg file can't be found relative to the new instdir. Using --instdir is sort of like a chroot. I also tried --admindir and --root in various combinations to see if I could use the dpkg system relative to / but install relocate the files but they didn't work. I guess rpm has a relocate option that works but not Ubuntu.
You can also write a script that runs dpkg-deb with a different environment for 6 times, generating 6 different packages. When you make a modification, you simply have to run your script, and all 6 packages gets generated and you can install them on your machines avoiding postinst hacking!
Why not install to a standard location, and simply use a postinst script to create symbolic links to the desired location? This is much cleaner, and shouldn't break anything in dpk -I.
In the process of building an RPM package, I have to specify the BuildRoot and later will be used in %install which invovles $RPM_BUILD_ROOT. I always think that $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is the fake installation for RPM to perform packaging. Then, at install time using the RPM package, it will install into actual location. For example:
$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/usr/bin
I thought that $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is for the packaging process only, and in some ways RPM can distinguish the $RPM_BUILD_ROOT and the actual install location when the user performs "rpm -ivh package.rpm" will be /usr/bin.
But recently upon reading some documents, it is suggested that $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is the actual location which will be installed, and the $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is specified by user with the setting of environment variable $RPM_BUILD_ROOT in order to let the users install the package in their desire locations. Otherwise, $RPM_BUILD_ROOT will be null and it will install into the default location. In the above case, it is /usr/bin . Thus, $RPM_BUILD_ROOT is not just for packaging or "fake installation" process, but is a way for user to define install location, similar to select folder location in Windows.
I don't know my thinking is correct or not. Can someone please verify? Thanks in advance.
$RPM_BUILD_ROOT (or the equivalent %{buildroot} SPEC file macro) always holds the directory under which RPM will look for any files to package. The RPM scripts (e.g. the script that compresses the manual pages) will also use that value to know where to look for the files that were just installed. Normally, this value will be non-empty and contain a location away from the system directories - usually somewhere under /tmp or /var/tmp.
The author of the SPEC file is expected to make sure that make install (or whatever installer the software in question is using) will place any files under $RPM_BUILD_ROOT, with the same hierarchy that should be used when the software is finally installed. E.g. to have RPM install ls in /bin/ls, the %install SPEC file section should make sure that ls is placed in $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/bin/ls.
The author of the SPEC file is also expected to use the BuildRoot: tag to specify a proper location. Alternatively, the build system could have an rpmrc RPM configuration file with a proper entry. In any case the build root should be set, so that:
Normal users will be able to build the source package.
Should the superuser ever build the source package, the build process will not clobber any system files, unless the superuser installs the resulting binary package. And yes, there may be a good reason to build some packages as root - for example, running the full glibc testsuite requires root privileges for some tests.
That said, RPM can and will build a package with an empty build root variable. In that case both the build install and the final destination locations will coincide. A potential call to e.g. make install will use the default locations, thus clobbering the system files under e.g. /usr/lib if run with sufficient privileges. Additionally, having /usr/bin/* in your %files section will happily pull the whole contents of the build host /usr/bin/ directory into your binary package.
Bottom line:
Never use an empty build root.
Do not build packages as root unless there is absolutely no other way.
the file ~/.rpmmacros defines the paths per user:
%_topdir %(echo $HOME)/rpmbuild
%_tmppath %{_topdir}/tmp
and one can also define them with rpmbuild command line parameters:
rpmbuild --define '_topdir /home/username/rpmbuild'
I made a perl script that creates a deb binary package from scratch.
I created the data, control, etc.
But when I run dpkg -i on my deb package it complains that it is unable to files from data.
Example:
unable to create '.dpkg-new'(while processing ''): No such file or directory.
I have downloaded some .deb packages to look at and they do not use the preinst script to create the directory structure.
I am thinking I am doing something wrong, I consider having to create my own directories in preinst but it does not seem right... perhaps I am missing something?
Do I have to create directories where my files from data will be copied in the preinst sh, or should dpkg do it and I am doing something wrong?
I had the same problem in a Ruby script I wrote.
I was generating a list of files to pass to tar when building the data.tar.gz archive. When I ungzip and untared the archive manually it would deflate fine, but dpkg would fail.
It turns out that the list of files must also include each directory to create as well.
Note that when I created data.tar.gz I built it with nearly the same options as dpkg-deb/build.c does in the dpkg-1.15.8.11 source.
execlp(TAR, "tar", "-cf", "-", "--format=gnu", "--null", "-T", "-", "--no-recursion", NULL);
Instead I used
IO.popen("gnutar -czf - --format=gnu -T - --no-recursion", "r+")
In addition to what #Arrowmaster said, check the http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ for some detailed explanation of the files. After you build the package itself, you can check it with lintian tool to see if there is anything obvious you might have missed.
If any one looks for a solution to the problem:
"Build a deb package from an rpm spec file."
Look here http://www.deepnet.cx/debbuild/
I have made my own perl build script much simple then the mentioned one so I can easily maintain it.
Some useful knowledge gained in the process:
0. the deb is an ar archive that contains 3 files, the order of the files is important.
1. the scripts from control.tar.gz must be made executable.
2. it is good to have a preinstall script to make directories if dirs do not exist.
3. sometimes dpkg decides to unzip your zips (this happened if the zip was the only file in the data.tar.gz) so check for that in an postinstall script.
4. when you tar.gz some files be sure to chmod to the dir that contains the directory structure for your tar.
You should not attempt to manually create a .deb binary package by hand. The Debian New Maintainers' Guide covers how to get started creating a Debian package using the correct tools.
Your hand created package may look correct to you but because it is not installing it is obviously flawed in either a minor way that you have not noticed or in a more serious way that is not visible to you (for example most people don't realize a .deb is actually an ar archive).
There are lots of reasons for this. You really need to run:
dpkg -i -D1110 mydeb.deb
And post the result to have any hope of someone being able to solve the problem.