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.
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
Created a simple debian/ubuntu package with some library files (*.so).
Works fine except, it installs them as default in the root path "/".
Since I've recreated my Makefile to output to $DESTDIR/ instead of "the usual" directory that I provide in the Makefile, when compiling from source, how do I now set the path of where the files should be installed now? I know there are several choices when using dh_make to create the package, "s" being the default one. Still, can't seem to find anything on where to tell dpkg to put the installed files.
Secondly, a Deb Library package containing only ".so" files should still be a "Single binary" since I gather that using the Library is for development purposes? Since this is a library, I just wanna make sure that's not the cause of the files being installed in the wrong location. What I mean is .so files and header files installation?
What I've used:
dh_make -e my#email.com -f ../myfile-1.0.tar.gz
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
and some configurations set i debian/control, $DESTDIR in Makefile.
Seems that it was fairly simple, yet very confusing. This works, not sure if there is a better solution.
In my makefile I have a few variables
InstallTo = /usr/lib
install:
mkdir -p $(DESTDIR)$(InstallTo)
cp $FILE_TO_COPY $(DESTDIR)$(InstallTo)
This way it will create the directory tree inside the *.deb file. I had some trouble using /usr/local/lib instead of /usr/lib/ and rmdir complained when trying to delete it and it had no files (just directories). Not sure why, but changed it to /usr/lib instead.
Since someone voted this up, I'm guessing someone were also looking for the answer and this is my solution. Perhaps someone can provide a better one if there is one.
Just a note, $DESTDIR variable is the variable that dh_make suggest the user to use in our Makefile. It's the path to where dpkg will build the program and where it will install it so it can be included in the .deb file.
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.
Alright so after trying to chase down the dependencies for various pieces of software for the n-th time and replicating work that various people do for all the different linux distributions I would like to know if there is a better way of bundling various pieces of software into one .rpm or .deb file for easier distribution.
My current set up for doing this is a frankenstein monster of various tools but mainly Vagrant and libguestfs (built from source running in Fedora because none of the distributions actually ship it with virt-diff). Here are the steps I currently follow:
Spin up a base OS using either a Vagrant box or by create one from live CDs.
Export the .vmdk and call it base-image.
Spin up an exact replica of the previous image and go to town: use the package manager,
or some other means, to download, compile, and install all the pieces that I need. Once again, export the .vmdk and call it non-base-image.
Make both base images available to the Fedora guest OS that has libguestfs.
Use virt-diff to diff the two images and dump that data to file called diff.
Run several ruby scripts to massage diff into another format that contains the information I need and none of the stuff I don't like things in /var.
Run another script to generate a command script for guestfish with a bunch of copy-out commands.
Run the guestfish script.
Run another script to regenerate the symlinks from diff because guestfish can't do it.
Turn the resulting folder structure into a .deb or .rpm file and ship it.
I would like to know if there is a better way to do this. You'd think there would be but I haven't figured it out.
I would definitely consider something along the lines of:
A)
yum list (select your packages/dependencies whatever)
use yumdownloader on the previous list (or use th pkgs you have already downloaded)
createrepo
ship on media with install script that adds the cd repo to repolist, etc.
or B)
first two steps as above, then pack the rpms into an archive build a package that contains all of the above and kicks off the actual install of the rpms (along the lines of rpm -Uvh /tmp/repo/*) as a late script (in the cleanup phase, maybe). Dunno if this can be done avoiding locks on the rpm database.
I think you reached the point of complexity - indeed a frankenstein monster - where you should stop fearing of making proper packages with dependencies. We did this in my previous work - we had a set of fabricated rpm packages - and it was very easy and straightforward, including:
pre/post install scripts
uninstall scripts
dependencies
We never had to do anything you just described. And for the customer, installing even a set of packages was very easy!
You can follow a reference manual of how to build RPM package for more info.
EDIT: If you need a single installation package, then create this master packge, that would contain all the other packages (with dependencies set properly) and installed them in the post-install script (and uninstalled them in the uninstall script).
There are mainly 3 steps to make a package with all dependencies (let it be A, B & C).
A. Gather required files.
There are many way to gather files of the main software and its dependencies. In order to get all the dependices and for error free run you need to use a base OS (i.e live system)
1. Using AppDirAssistant
This app is used by www.portablelinuxapps.org to create portable app directory. They scan and watch for the files accessed by the app to find required.
2. Using chroot & overlayfs
In this method you don't need to boot into live cd instead chroot into it.
a. mount the .iso # /cdrom and
b. mount the filesystem(filesystem.squashfs) # another place, say # /tmp/union/root
c. Bind mount /proc # /tmp/union/root/proc
d. Overlay on it
mount -t overlayfs overlayfs /tmp/union/root -o lowerdir=/tmp/union/root,upperdir=/tmp/union/rw
e. Chroot
chroot /tmp/union/root
Now you can install packages using apt-get or another method (only from the chrooted terminal). All the changed files are stored # /tmp/union/rw. Take files from there.
3. Using manually collected packages
Use package manager to collect dependencies. For example
apt-get install package --print-uris will print download uris for dep packages. Using this uris download packages and extract all (dpkg -x 1.deb ./extracted).
B. Clean garbage files
After gathering files remove unwanted files
C. Pack files
1. Using appImageAssistance
If you manually gathered files then you need to copy appname.desktop file from ./usr/share/applications to root of directory tree. Also copy file named AppRun from another app or extract it from AppDirAssistance.
2. Make a .deb or .rpm using gathered files.
Is the problem primarily that of ensuring that your customers have installed all the standard upstream distro packages necessary for your package to run?
If that's the case, then I believe the most straightforward solution would be to leverage the yum and apt infrastructure to have those tools track down and install the necessary prerequisite packages.
If you supply a native yum/apt repository with complete pre-req specs (the hard work you've apparently already completed). Then the standard system install tool takes care of the rest. See link below for more on creating a personal repository for yum/apt.
For off-line customers, you can supply media with your software, and a mirror - or mirror subset - of the upstream distro, and instructions for adding them to yum config/apt config.
Yum
Creating a Yum Repository in the Fedora Deployment Guide
Apt
How To Setup A Debian Repository on the Debian Wiki
So your customers aren't ever going to install any other software that might specify a different version of those dependencies that you are walking all over, right?
Why not just create your own distro if you're going to go that far?
Or you can just give them a bunch of packages and a single script that does rpm -i dep1 dep2 yourpackage
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.