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72 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
72 lines
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
The Alien package converter:
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Alien is a program that converts between redhat rpm, debian dpkg, stampede
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slp and slackware tgz file formats. If you want to use a package from
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another linux distribution than the one you have installed on your system,
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you can use alien to convert it to your preferred package format and
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install it.
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Warning, alien can be dangerous:
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Despite the high version number, alien is still (and will probably always
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be) rather experimental software. It's been under development for many
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years now, but there are still many bugs and limitations.
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Alien should not be used to replace important system packages, like
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sysvinit, libc, or other things that are essential for the functioning of
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your system. Many of these packages are set up differently by the
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different distributions, and packages from the different distributions
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cannot be used interchangeably. In general, if you can't uninstall the
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package without breaking your system, don't try to replace it with an
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alien version.
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Getting alien:
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The newest versions of alien are available at the alien home page; drop by
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http://kitenet.net/programs/alien/
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On sunsite and its mirrors, alien is located in the
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pub/Linux/utils/scripts/ directory.
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You can also get rpm or deb packages of alien:
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deb: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/unstable/binary-all/admin/alien_*.deb
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rpm: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/noarch/alien-*.rpm
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Other things you'll need:
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To use alien, you will need several other programs. Alien is a perl
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program, and requires perl version 5.004 or greater. If you use slackware,
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make sure you get perl 5.004, the perl 5.003 in slackware does not work
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with alien!
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To convert packages to or from rpms, you need the Red Hat Package Manager;
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get it from Red Hat's ftp site.
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If you want to convert packages into debian packages, you will need the
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dpkg, dpkg-dev, and debhelper packages, which are available on the Debian
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ftp site.
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To convert to/from stampede packages, you will need bzip2, get it at
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http://www.muraroa.demon.co.uk/
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Attention, Slackware, Red Hat, and Stampede users: Bruce S. Babcock
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<babcock@math.psu.edu> has put together an "alien-extra"
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package of all the extra files you need to use alien on
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a Red Hat or Slackware system.
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The Slackware version is at
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ftp://ykbsb2.yk.psu.edu/pub/alien/alien-extra.tgz
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The RedHat version is at
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ftp://ykbsb2.yk.psu.edu/pub/alien/alien-extra.rpm
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The Stampede version is at
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ftp://ykbsb2.yk.psu.edu/pub/alien/alien-extra.slp
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Programs that use alien:
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I know of one program that acts as a frontend to alien - kpackviewer is a
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package viewer that can convert between package formats by using alien. It's
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homepage is at http://www.momentus.com.br/users/hook/kpackviewer.html
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Please report any bugs in alien to the author:
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Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>
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