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Re: Problem with Synaptic

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On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 08:19:15AM -0500, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Friday 12 November 2021 07:36:01 Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:
> 
> > On 12/11/2021 09:30, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:
> > > This is the immediate problem that I need to fix:
> > >
> > > comp@AbNormal:~$ sudo apt upgrade
> > > Reading package lists... Done
> > > Building dependency tree
> > > Reading state information... Done
> > > E: The package brscan4 needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an
> > > archive for it.
> > >
> > > sudo apt update ran without any problems.
> >
> > Try downloading it again (since it's not part of the archives, it must
> > be downloaded manually) and running 'apt install ./brscan4-......deb'
> > (substituting the actual file name, naturally). The './' is necessary
> > to tell apt it's a file name.
> 
> No, to be precise, it tells the file system its a file in the currently 
> cd'd to directory.  Which may not be in the env's $PATH.

It's both, Gene.

To the file system (kernel), ./foo is a relative pathname that's 100%
equivalent to foo.  There's no difference at all.

However, to apt-get or apt, ./foo and foo are very different arguments.
The former is a relative path to a file, and the latter is a package name.

This has nothing to do with $PATH, because we're not talking about running
a program from the current directory.  We're talking about apt-get and apt
specifically.

You're thinking of the conventional use of "./configure" and so on to run
a program in the current directory.  This is necessary because PATH should
never contain "." (or the empty string) as one of its components.  That
would allow the execution of *anything* at all in the current directory
(the way MS-DOS works).  This is a huge security problem on a multi-user
system, where someone could leave a script in /tmp hoping for you to
run it accidentally.

It *works* because the shell bypasses the PATH search if the command that
you give it contains a slash character.  ./configure means "run the program
named configure in the current directory, and don't search anywhere else".

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Thread

Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-11 18:40 +0100
  Re: Problem with Synaptic "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2021-11-11 19:20 +0100
    Re: Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-11 19:40 +0100
  Re: Problem with Synaptic Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-11-11 20:10 +0100
    Re: Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-11 20:40 +0100
      Re: Problem with Synaptic Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-11-11 21:20 +0100
        Re: Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-11 22:10 +0100
        Re: Problem with Synaptic Eduardo M KALINOWSKI <eduardo@kalinowski.com.br> - 2021-11-12 13:40 +0100
          Re: Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-12 14:10 +0100
            Re: Problem with Synaptic Eduardo M KALINOWSKI <eduardo@kalinowski.com.br> - 2021-11-12 14:30 +0100
          Re: Problem with Synaptic Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-11-12 14:20 +0100
            Re: Problem with Synaptic Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-11-12 19:40 +0100
              Re: Problem with Synaptic Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-11-12 20:30 +0100
        Re: Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-12 13:40 +0100
          Re: Problem with Synaptic Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-11-12 14:20 +0100
          Re: Problem with Synaptic Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-11-12 20:10 +0100
            Re: Problem with Synaptic "Stephen P. Molnar" <s.molnar@sbcglobal.net> - 2021-11-13 16:00 +0100
              Re: Problem with Synaptic Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-11-13 17:40 +0100
                Re: Problem with Synaptic Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2021-11-13 21:00 +0100

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