I have a package to maintain, which has a WantedBy dependency. It must also save it's state after being updated (enabled/disabled, active/inactive after package was updated). Suddenly I needed to change WantedBy dependency from one service to another (WantedBy A.service to WantedBy B.service) and I felt puzzled when I tried to find debhelper options for that. I did not find any way to delete previous dependency on update autoamtically without meddling with postinst script. Is there a proper way to do so via debhelper auto-generated scripts? ATM I'm using dh_installsystemd like that to save service state:

override_dh_installsystemd:
	dh_installsystemd --no-enable --restart-after-upgrade --no-start

It updates service and saves it's state and overall works fine except for removing excessive service dependencies. If there is no way to do that via dh, is there any other good standard way? It seems strange that it was not implemented by default. Why isn't it done on deb-systemd-helper enable my_package.service?

I have a deb package for installation. Shall I install by dpkg -i my.deb, or by apt? Will both handle the software dependency problem well? If by apt, how can I install from the deb by apt?

I'm making a deb package to install a custom application. I changed all files/folders ownership to root in order to avoid the warnings I was getting during installation, and in Ubuntu all runs smoothly, as Ubuntu changes the ownership of the files/folders to the user installing the package. But when I'm installing on Debian, root remains the owner. The application uses a folder to write data, and here is the problem. Running as a standard user, the app does not have permission to write on the folder. Now, how should I deal with this problem? Should I make a post install script on the deb package, doing the chmod o+w? Should I package the directory already with those permissions set? Or is there any way of setting the owner of the files to the user that installs the app automatically (like Ubuntu does)?

_Heads up: This is *not* a question about how to recover the system (easily done), but about checkinstall. Feel free to skip the "Background" section._ # Background _A little rant plus maybe a PSA..._ My scenario is this: I configure and make some application and then run checkinstall to create a .deb package for it. If it works, I find this useful: I see my custom software in apt output; I can put the package on hold to avoid apt trying to install the same package from upstream (if there is one), I can cleanly uninstall it with apt purge mypackage and so on and forth. Also, if other packages depend on this, they will see mine, and will not try to pull in conflicting upstream packages. Unfortunately I just found out that if during the install (when checkinstall seemingly internally calls make install) something goes wrong, then checkinstall will try to restore some files from "backup" (whatever or wherever that may be?). In my case checkinstall thought it would be a good idea to replace the somewhat important /lib symlink with a directory; the content of it was just terminfo/x/xterm-256color after checkinstall was done with it. Needless to say literally every binary in a Ubuntu-based installation depends on something from /lib so the system is immediately broken.

...
make: *** [Makefile:537: lisp] Error 2
****  Installation failed. Aborting package creation.
Restoring overwritten files from backup.../usr/bin/checkinstall: line 95: /usr/bin/gettext: No such file or directory
...

(/usr/bin/gettext of course is still there but like any other binary it requires at least libc.so which is in /lib). You can't even ls or ln anymore to fix the issue right there, the system cannot even shut down anymore as basically no new process can be started whatsoever. The situation is easily remedied booting from a rescue system, the original /usr/lib is thankfully still intact; only the symlink needs to be restored. Obviously I will not be using checkinstall anymore. I have no idea how it decided that this terminfo file needed "recovery", and don't even want to imagine what else it could have destroyed. # Question Is there a safe and easy way on a Ubuntu/Debian based system to create a .deb package for some custom software in a way similar to checkinstall but without the risk of trashing the system like this? Back when I decided to use checkinstall, all alternatives I looked at seemed to involve significant manual work - basically the same as a package maintainer would have to do - which would not be worth it to me. I do not want to distribute the .deb files, just be able to track them a little and make them visible to package management. Heck; is there a standard way to just fake a package and pretend it's installed, somehow?

I'm trying to add a systemd service file to an existing Debian package. I followed https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/pkg-systemd/Packaging , so I created debian/packagename.service. Because my debhelper is version 9.x, I also: - added dh-systemd to Build-Depends in debian/control - added --with systemd to the dh command in debian/rules. Now when I rebuild the package with debuild -i -us -uc -b, it fails with this output: Now running lintian... [...] W: packagename: init.d-script-not-marked-as-conffile etc/init.d/packagename E: packagename: init.d-script-not-included-in-package etc/init.d/packagename It seems like the build script expects an init.d script if there is a .service file. And indeed, the generated DEBIAN/postinst includes this section: # Automatically added by dh_installinit if [ -x "/etc/init.d/infinoted" ]; then update-rc.d infinoted defaults >/dev/null invoke-rc.d infinoted start || exit $? fi # End automatically added section Is this expected behavior? Should I always include SysV init scripts when I include a .service file? If not, what is the recommended way to prevent the generation of this section? My system is Debian Jessie.

I find myself unable to convert a .deb package to .rpm to install it on fedora. I am not able to download the equivalent rpm file, so conversion is my only way out. I get this error after using the prompt alien -r package.deb as su. Package build failed. Here's the log of the command (cd shadow-beta-0.8.62; rpmbuild --buildroot='/home/user/shadow/shadow-alpha-artful(1)/shadow-beta-0.8.62' -bb --target x86_64 'shadow-beta-0.8.62-2.spec'): Fehler: Zeile 5: Leerer Tag: Summary: Für folgende Zielplattform(en) wird gebaut: x86_64 Edit: I am unable to follow the suggestions in the answers. How can I edit a file that is not even generated because the conversion failed?

I'm upgrading NodeJS and NPM to the latest LTS on my aging Debian 11 (bullseye) server. I purged the distro's stock *nodejs* and *npm* packages and dependencies, and successfully installed NodeJS v22.15.0 and NPM v10.9.2 using [nodesource](https://github.com/nodesource/distributions) . I'm now attempting to remove the *nodejs-legacy* package which — I'm assuming — is likely not needed anymore, but both *apt* and *apt-get* (they behave exactly the same in this regard) complain that:

$ sudo apt remove nodejs-legacy
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Virtual packages like 'nodejs-legacy' can't be removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

As far as I understand, virtual packages only define dependencies and/or install configuration files. How come a package, even "virtual" — or whatever they want to call it ­— cannot be uninstalled? Can't *apt* (or *apt-get*) simply update the package database and/or remove said files? This particular package is not even part in any dependency:

$ sudo apt depends nodejs-legacy

$ sudo apt rdepends nodejs-legacy

I guess I could just leave it there since it doesn't seem to conflict with anything else (so far, that is). But I'd rather keep my servers free of old garbage lying around. What is the recommended way of ridding a Debian system of old virtual packages that are not needed anymore?

Because Java 25 LTS is coming soon (September 2025) and I've not even yet installed Java JDK 21 LTS (September 2023), I've attempted to do so with a sudo apt install openjdk-21-jdk on my Debian 12. But it failed with a package not found message. Its package isn't available yet on Debian 12: [openjdk-21](https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/openjdk-21) (except on sid). I'm considering downloading it from [https://jdk.java.net/archive/](https://jdk.java.net/archive/) as a tar.gz of 21.0.2 (build 21.0.2+13) version (at the cost of forgetting apt commands to handle Java, and writing on my agenda to check manually for updates there) But I'm fearing this: Won't the .deb included in this .tar.gz break my system if I attempt to install it, if the dedicated openjdk-21-jdk package for Debian 12 cannot be created for years?

I was trying to install [Seedsync](https://github.com/ipsingh06/seedsync) . I followed the instructions on their github Download the deb package from the latest release Install the deb package: sudo dpkg -i When I try to install the deb package I get this error Selecting previously unselected package seedsync. (Reading database ... 276845 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack seedsync_0.6-0_amd64.deb ... Unpacking seedsync (0.6-0) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of seedsync: seedsync depends on libreadline6 (>= 6.0); however: Package libreadline6 is not installed. dpkg: error processing package seedsync (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.27-3ubuntu1) ... Errors were encountered while processing: seedsync Trying to install libreadline6 tell me that it's either moved somewhere else or obsolete. **Edit:** sudo apt-get install libreadline6 gives me Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package libreadline6 is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source E: Package 'libreadline6' has no installation candidate **Edit2:** Tring to install libc-bin or libreadline7 shows that it's already the newest version, 0 upgraded,0 newly installed and 0 not upgraded. The seedsync package asks for libreadline6 (>=6.0) and I think I have libreadline7 apt-get install libreadline7 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done libreadline7 is already the newest version (7.0-3). 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

I am automating version bumping of my project with this bash script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

CHANGELOG="Changelog.md"
DEBIAN_CHANGELOG="debian/changelog"
UPSTREAM_VERSION=$(cat VERSION)

# Updating entries in rpm files

DEB_RELEASE_NOTES=$(awk '{print "  * " $0}'   Mon, 10 Mar 2025 20:08:00 +0200

Whereas the RELEASE_NOTES file contains:

1. Split codebase into multiple files.
2. Use a seperate version file and define built version upon compile.
4. [BUGFIX] If input file is same as output file copy input file into a temporary one.
5. Improved Documentation

Do you know why all lines are stuck as a single bullet???

I'm using dpkg -b to build packages with python scripts. (DEBIAN format). In the DEBIAN folder I'have added the following files: compat control copyright changelog The changelog is using the right format. 7zrecover (1.0-1) UNRELEASED; urgency=low * Initial release. (Closes: #XXXXXX) -- Lars Wirzenius Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:25:32 +0000 When I install the package, and I try to display the changelog, I always get This change is not coming from a source that supports changelogs. Failed to fetch the changelog for 7zrecover URI was: http:/// . changelog (the URI is .///. Changelog, the site does not let me post it right) "This change is not coming from a source that supports changelogs." is there anyway to fix this? I was thinking in redirect the source to the computer, and putting a changelog at /usr/share/doc/7zrecover/

I'm building a .deb package using: dpkg-deb --build package The directory "package" contains another directory called DEBIAN that has the changelog, but the resulting package doesn't have the changelog.Debian.gz in it, and if I check the package using lintian I get following errors: E: msodbcsql: debian-changelog-file-missing W: msodbcsql: unknown-control-file changelog I don't know if relevant but the permissions on the changelog are as follows: -rwxr-xr-x 1 maximk maximk 159 May 10 11:23 changelog Why is the "changelog" considered to be an unknown control file instead of, you know, a changelog?

Is there a way to use dpkg to view a changelog between different versions of a package? If I wanted to know e.g., why 'passwd' was being upgraded in a recent update is there a way to use dpkg to see what changed? $ dpkg -l passwd Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-==============-============-============-================================= ii passwd 1:4.2-3.1 amd64 change and administer password an It's being upgraded to 1:4.2-3.3... I know with Debian I can look at [the package notes](https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/passwd) and from there at the linked [Debian changelog](http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs/main/s/shadow/shadow_4.1.5.1-1_changelog) . But this doesn't apply to all deb based distros, and it's awkward for a quick look at what's new.

Let me take example of the Debian package coreutils on Ubuntu 22.04. If we inspect the list of files installed by coreutils:

$ cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/coreutils.list | less

We see that there are some binaries that are dropped into /bin and some into /usr/bin. However, due to /usr merging, the /bin directory is essentially a symlink to /usr/bin. What is the rationale behind shipping some binaries in /bin and others in /usr/bin when the directories are going to be usr merged anyways upon installation?

When packaging an upstream binary for Debian, I get a lintian error as follows:

E: redwax-tool: copyright-file-contains-full-apache-2-license

This is indeed true, the upstream package provides the full text of the Apache license, as it should. According to https://lintian.debian.org/tags/copyright-file-contains-full-apache-2-license.html we get the following terse explanation:

The copyright file /usr/share/doc/pkg/copyright contains the complete text of the Apache 2.0 license. It should refer to the file /usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0 instead.

What is missing are instructions how to achieve this in the debian directory. Further instructions at https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-docs.html#s-copyrightfile say "This file must neither be compressed nor be a symbolic link". The debian/copyright file generated by the debmake tooling ends with the following sensible looking text:

#----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Files marked as NO_LICENSE_TEXT_FOUND may be covered by the following
# license/copyright files.

#----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# License file: COPYING
                                  Apache License
                            Version 2.0, January 2004
                         http://www.apache.org/licenses/ 
 .
    TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR USE, REPRODUCTION, AND DISTRIBUTION
 .
[snip]

Can anyone provide an example or some guidance on concrete packaging steps to take to remove this error.

I have updated Debian to 11. Mysql sources list still listed buster though. So i tried to reconfigure using mysql-apt-config_0.8.24-1_all.deb which did not help. So i downloaded mysql-apt-config_0.8.33-1_all.deb however, this cannot be dpkg -i mysql-apt-config_0.8.33-1_all.deb as it gives dpkg-deb: error: archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/mysql-common_8.0.35-1ubuntu23.04_amd64.deb' uses unknown compression for member 'control.tar.zst', giving up I read that zstd is only available in Debian 12. What is the cleanest way to achieve updating mysql apt lists after debian upgrade? The file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mysql.list contains warning ### THIS FILE IS AUTOMATICALLY CONFIGURED ### # You may comment out entries below, but any other modifications may be lost. # Use command 'dpkg-reconfigure mysql-apt-config' as root for modifications. So if i manually change buster to bullseye it will be probably overwritten later.

Is there some shell script out there that will update my files for me?

# apt update
Notice: Missing Signed-By in the sources.list(5) entry for 'https://storage.googleapis.com/cros-packages/133 '
Notice: Missing Signed-By in the sources.list(5) entry for 'http://opensource.nchc.org.tw/debian '
Notice: Consider migrating all sources.list(5) entries to the deb822 .sources format
Notice: The deb822 .sources format supports both embedded as well as external OpenPGP keys
Notice: See apt-secure(7) for best practices in configuring repository signing.

I have spent hours trying to figure out this out and just give up. My files just have "deb ..." lines in them. And here is

$ cd /usr/share/keyrings && ls
cros.gpg                                        debian-archive-bullseye-stable.gpg
debian-archive-bookworm-automatic.gpg           debian-archive-buster-automatic.gpg
debian-archive-bookworm-security-automatic.gpg  debian-archive-buster-security-automatic.gpg
debian-archive-bookworm-stable.gpg              debian-archive-buster-stable.gpg
debian-archive-bullseye-automatic.gpg           debian-archive-keyring.gpg
debian-archive-bullseye-security-automatic.gpg  debian-archive-removed-keys.gpg

Also I filed https://issues.chromium.org/issues/392237686 because shouldn't /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cros.list be the chrome team's responsibility to update, not mine?

### General overview I try to make a debian .deb package from a python project with multiple modules, like this:

├── main.py
├── setup.py
└── triumphum
    ├── autocomplection.py
    ├── symbols.py
    ├── 
    ├── tui_classes.py
    ├── tui_functions.py
    ├── tui_list.py
    ├── tui.py
    └── tui_screens.py

### What I already did I alredy made a DEBIAN/control file. ### What I still need I try to create a unix hierarchy but I don’t know where to put each file of my project. ### The question Where to put each file of the project? Should I put main.py, setup.py, and whole triumphum directory in the same directory? If any witch one? If not, in witch directories should I put them?

I am trying to install deb package in a new AWS 14.04 ami instance, but it fail with the following error -

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

 youtube-snapshot-taker : Depends: firefox (= 35.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) but 36.0.4+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 is to be installed

E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The deb was package with fpm and his deb-dependencies are -

Depends: python-virtualenv, python-pip, python-dev, xvfb, firefox (= 35.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1), openssl, build-essential, xorg, libssl-dev, libxrender-dev, libqt4-dev, qt4-dev-tools, wkhtmltox, libxml2-dev, libxslt1-dev

I checked that firefox is not already installed (dpkg -l).
I have no idea what is the problem.
Thanks for helping!

## *CONTEXT* With a local package repository, I'm able to provide my APT instances with a set of software packages and configurations from a server which I control, allowing any client to install this software using just the normal apt install command (providing the repository is added to their /etc/apt/sources.list{,.d/}). For my attempt at creating a local package repository, I followed this tutorial on bipmedia.com, which roughly consists of: 1. Generate the .deb 2. Store the .deb on an Apache2 web server 3. Generate a Package.gz file ### My Attempt #### Generating the binary package file To generate the .deb, the software files are required, a DEBIAN folder with metadata is generated and the following command compiles the code and assembles the package: dpkg-deb --build [*source code tree with DEBIAN directory*] #### Serve repository files with Apache2 server _I'm skipping this part as it's unrelated to the problem I'm seeking to solve with this question._ #### Generating a Packages.gz file (repository metadata) With the an open shell instance whose working directory is the Apache server root folder containing the .deb file from above, I called: dpkg-scanpackages debian /dev/null | gzip -9c >debian/Packages.gz ## *PROBLEM* Calling apt update on the client machine, it complains with:

W: The repository 'http://example.com  packages/ Release' does not have a Release file.

This necessary file is missing in my local repository. It seems to be a register of package checksums, but after searching on the Internet, my very limited understanding of the topic kept me from being able to find out how to generate it. --- ***Note:*** My /etc/apt/sources.list file does have the following line: deb http://example.com packages/ ## *QUESTION* How do I generate the Release file for a local APT package repository?