Using the series at http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html and some redhat rawhide experience I managed to get my debconf family packages high enough so that spamassassin 2.60 would build. I had to de-install "dialog" and "whiptail" and I'm just rebuilding ncurses5.3 do I can install a newer dialog.

Debians "will remove XXXX soon" really throws me, for some reason it got it into its head it was going to remove logrotate, acct, adduser, samba, etc and lots of essential stuff like the bsd* package. I couldn't find an easy way to change its mind apart from go through dselect and select everything that had a star in the left column but not the right.

I installed libhtml-parser-perl-3.28 WITHOUT perl unicode by editing the Makefile.PL and debian/control (so it would run on Perl 5.6), luckily deb's aren't so strict on pristine source so I didn't have to hack & combine the single patch file that debs use with my own changes,though for some reason the build package only included docs and no .pm files, so I had to "make install" from the build-dir which is a nasty hack, but at least spamassassin make test worked once it could find the html parser.

Just started suffering from Debian Dependancy Hell with apt-get and dselect

Once I "start" to install a debian package, even if it fails because of unsatisfied dependancies it then only knows of the "newer" "failed" package and I can't install the old one with dselect any more.

I build the latest spamassassin .deb from source but it wont install because I my version of html-parser-perl is tool old.

I can't install the latest html-parser-perl cos my perl is too old, etc etc, I need to upgrade the box.

So I install HTML-Parser-3.28 by hand the perl way. It passes all the test cases, NOW I can install spamassassin if I remove the dependancy on html-parser-perl as a package as I know I have the right files anyway.

NO!

> debian/rules clean
> debian/rules binary

perl: relocation error: /usr/lib/perl5/auto/HTML/Parser/Parser.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Tstack_sp_ptr

doh!
Lets start AGAIN

> dpkg-source -x spamassassin_2.61-1.dsc
> debian/rules binary

perl: relocation error: /usr/lib/perl5/auto/HTML/Parser/Parser.so: undefined symbol: Perl_Tstack_sp_ptr

Gah!

And theres no way I can get back to where I was.

So I need to get perl 5.8 before can get html-parser-perl working the .deb way, I need to build debs from SOURCE if I want to avoid upgrading my entire libcs and dependancies, but .deb dont't have simple src.rpm like redhat so I can easy automate it.

SPIT SPIT SPIT

Who says debian has no dependancy hell?

Grrrr

And if I dare add a "testing" source to /etc/apt/sources.list then dselect goes barmy telling me I have to update all kinds of packages.

It seems the useful notes are here:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-sourcehandling.en.html

I finally got debian installed twice in one day.
Once on a P133 box with 32MB RAM after smoothwall failed to take (some USB problem), and then again on a HP C110/777/9000 with PA Risc processor at 110MHz and 512MB RAM.

I find the main problem with the debian website (apart from the broken links which are probably a result of the debian server compromise) is that there are lots of "related-information" links between pages that have overlap. Its hard to tell if a link about "boot disks" in a section about installation will link to more talk about boot disks or the actual boot disk images.

It turns out the HPPA installation instructions are really quite simple:

1) Stick the HPPA box on a network where the gateway also has DHCP and BOOTP
2) from the debian woody distribution in the hppa-disks section grab the "lif*" file and cause tftp and dhcp to serve this as the boot image
3) boot the HPPA without a keyboard and a null modem cable to the serial console, set at 9600,8N1
4) Interrupt the boot process and type:
boot LAN

and that was it
Cheers to Bruce Perens and the gang for making it possible.

My previous failures were using sarge and I think my troubles were down to driver modules being available in udebs but not any standard .deb file.

Whats with udebs, anyway?