Datasheet
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Part I ✦ The Fundamentals
Setting up mime-support (3.26-1) ...
Setting up mutt (1.5.5.1-20040112+1) ...
Setting up libsasl2-modules (2.1.18-2) ...
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree
Reading extended state information... Done
hostname:~#
Now mutt is installed. aptitude installed everything mutt really absolutely
required for functioning (the Depends), and an additional package that
mutt’s main-
tainer feels adds a good deal of value (the Recommends). The other recommended
package,
locales, and the package on which mutt depended, libc6, were already
installed. As a result, neither of them was installed. Both of these packages were
already installed because they are in the core Debian distribution and are always
included in new installs. The output from the command should look very much like
of
apt-get’s output. Not only do apt-get and apttiude share a lot of code, but
they also both end up calling
dpkg to do the messy work of installation. apt-get
and aptitude are responsible for selecting and downloading the packages to install
(to satisfy the various package relationships), while
dpkg does the heavy lifting.
Now go ahead and run
aptitude without any arguments on the command-line to
open up a fullscreen session. Press
/ to begin a search, type elinks, and press
Enter. You should now have the
elinks package highlighted. To mark the package
for installation, type
+. The color of the line will change to green, and in the far left
column an
i will appear; both of these are intended to indicate that the package will
be installed when you initiate operations.
Speaking of initiating operations, here’s a quick note about aptitude in fullscreen
mode: You first tell it what you want to do, and then you press the G key, for “go.”
aptitude displays a staging screen, showing you what operations it will perform.
Look over the list of changes and then press G at this staging screen to confirm its
actions. The screen changes, and you can see that
aptitude is going to install two
extra packages —
liblua50 and liblualib50 — to satisfy elinks’ dependencies.
Press G a third and final time to begin the installation process.
When the downloads have completed, you’ll be asked to confirm for the last time
that you want to continue, at which point
aptitude will call upon dpkg to perform
the package installations.
To reinstall a package with
aptitude, use either aptitude reinstall packagename
or browse to the package in the fullscreen interface and press L to mark the
package for reinstallation. It will be reinstalled when you next initiate packaging
operations.
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