Message-Id: <m0xcdMr-0004kQC@qwerty.aec.arc.ab.ca>
From: kurtk@aec.arc.ab.ca (kurt klingbeil)
Subject: dselect bugs
To: submit@bugs.debian.org
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 1997 14:26:56 -0700 (MST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 2878      

I recently decided to give debian another whirl.
Previous attempts at even trying were quickly subverted by a host of
problems...

Overall, I was impressed by how smoothly the install went, although
I wasn't impressed that cfdisk ended up blowing away my hpfs partitions
when I configured a 92Meg swapfile in the middle of the disk and mkswap
ended up making it 101Meg big thereby tromping on the extended partitions.
NBD, I don't use OS2 much anymore anyway, and I should have known to
stay away from cfdisk - I've heard of problems with it from  various
people.  Fdisk is where it's at, lean, mean, works every time...
Cfdisk looks like it's for DOS dweebs, and certainly isn't bullet proof.
Anyway, ignore all that, it's simply a preamble to the _real_ point of
this bug report:  dselect, namely:

Debian Linux `dselect' package handling frontend.
Version 1.4.0.8 (i386 elf).  Copyright (C) 1994-1996 Ian Jackson.   This is

- the ':' key does not "unhold" the package - the 'G' key does, though
- the 'G' key does not recursively "unhold" any more than one (1)
  virtual package level  i.e. :
   ---VVVP0---                hitting 'G' here
    --VVP0---                or here does nothing (though '=' does)
     -VP1---                hitting 'G' here will unhold Package{0,1,2}
      Package2
      Package1
      Package0
     -VP0---                hitting 'G' here will unhold Package{0,1}
      Package1
      Package0
    --VVP1---
      ...

  the '=', or "hold" does what one would expects at any V-level...
- the default setting when running dselect often (not always) seems to
  be  XX_  i.e. "purge"  even for packages which I previously selected
  for installation. Is this what happens when one runs 'dpkg --audit' ?
  It seems to happen only for packages which were not already installed.
  I would sort of expect the default to be to just leave packages
  alone.  If one wants to purge or auto-upgrade them, that would require
  intentional finger fiddling.
- I had a situation where I was running out of space on a partition
  and thought I could suspend dselect (and children) until I freed up
  some space.  In that case, hitting '^Z'  popped me to a login: prompt.
  Dselect/dpkg continued running in the background...
- if the ftp connection attempt fails, dselect dumbly continues on
  asking whether one wants to install (and then delete) the newly
  (_not_) downloaded files.  It would be better to just bail out at 
  that point and go back to the menu, or correcter still to just retry
  the ftp connection, until a '^C' is hit.

After pounding on dselect several times, I ended up getting the result
I wanted, but I thought I'd pass on some feedback on some of the first-
impression forming nits I encountered.  A few people told me "Don't
do it.  Just use RedHat."  I'm philosophically aligned your way and
will give it a serious try.

ttfn, 
kk