PACKAGE INSTALLER

In my last blog I had written about shell programming and now I am going to explain about my mini project that I have created in Shell programming using “zenity”, use for GUI (Graphics User Interface). Now you might be thinking about that what’s zenity? So zenity is a command in Linux to create GUI in shell programming, it’s similar to others command available in Linux distro. For more details you can just open your terminal and type there man zenity and you will get all information related to zenity, if it’s not install in your PC then please install it using following command, 

sudo apt-get install zenity -(for debian based Linux Distro)

sudo yum install zenity -(for Red-Hat and Fedora Linux Distro) 

Now after executing Package Installer, you will see the following window on your screen.

Fig1

It’ll ask you that do you in root account? If you are not in root account then select no.

Fig2

After clicking on OK a new terminal will open, to open new terminal I had use xterm command and it’s important to have xterm in your PC. If it is not installing then please install it. On new terminal it will ask for root password, then enter root password. If you didn’t created root account yet then enter you Admin account password that is your current account password.

Fig3

 

After switching into root account it will again ask you that do you in root account and this time you have to select yes. After click on yes, a package selection window will open. Here you have two choices either you can select .deb or .rpm extension to search all packages that are available in your PC.

Fig4

As shown in above fig .deb extension is selected that means it wiarch for all packages which have .deb extension.

Fig5

In above window only one package is found that is Virtualbox, after clicking on ok button the selected package will start installing on your PC.

What Does “This Package is of Bad Quality” Mean on Ubuntu

We had often seen this error message saying that this package is of bad quality when you install third-party .deb packages on Ubuntu or high quality software’s like Google Chrome and Skype. But this error is actually a false alarm. So you can go ahead and install the bad quality packages in spite of the error message shown.

This message is shown to indicate that the package files don’t comply with Debian packaging policy. So the package violates the quality standards and could cause serious problems on your computer. But this does not make an issue and you can go ahead and click the Ignore and Install button to continue.

You can see the exact error of the package by expanding the Details section. You will notice that details section says that package had error during a Lintian check. So what’s Lintian?

Ubuntu is Debian based and uses Debian packages (.deb packages). Most Debian packages don’t come with the third – party websites. They are contained in our distribution software repositotries. Ubuntu has most of the packages in its software packages right from the Debian’s software repositories. So to ensure these packages are of high and good quality Debian has a detailed packaging policy.

Lintian is an automated tool that checks Debian packages to ensure that the packages match with the Debian policy. This tool was designed for the package maintainers so that they can check their packages before uploading them. You can also run Lintian to check your entire repository to identify the problems.

The Ubuntu Software Center uses Lintian to check .deb packages before you install them. If it checks and shown the bad quality error message, it simply means that the package does not meet the guidelines.

So you can usually continue your installation by ignoring such type of error message shown by Ubuntu.

Install Packages from Non-Admin Account in Linux Distro

In my last blog “Add user account to root in Ubuntu”, I had written about how we can add or give all root access to any account. Now in this blog I will explain you that how to give only installation access to any Non-Admin account. After giving this access to non-admin account, the user of this account can install as well as remove any packages to and from Non-Admin account.

This is one of most important trick for those Companies and Organization whose Admin is not able to install and removes each packages from every PC’s of each employee.

To use gedit you have to do following:

Open the Terminal and type:

       sudo gedit /etc/sudoers
 

If you want to use vim you can simply enter the following into the Terminal:

        sudo visudo

When you used the “sudo visudo” command in terminal the “sudoers” file is open in terminal with vim editor.
   
Once you have the sudoers file open, scroll down to the line:
   
         root   ALL = (ALL)ALL

After this, on next line of above statement writes following configuration,

         UserName ALL=NOPASSWD : /usr/bin/apt-get , /usr/bin/aptitude

You can change username with your non-Admin account name, save the sudoers file and logout from root account and try to install packages from non-Admin account.

APTonCD – Create Backup of Any Installed Packages in Ubuntu

The most common method that is used to carry out installation of any sort of additional packages in Ubuntu is the apt-get. The apt-get following the name of the software package you specified to install, it searches for that particular software from the Internet and if found, apt-get downloads and installs it on your system. But there is a tool which allows you to install the download packages on your system without downloading. The tool named, APTonCd, which is a graphical tool that allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs of all the packages that you’ve downloaded via apt-get and thus creates a removal repository that you can use on other computers with a single action. The main advantage of APTonCD is that you don’t have to download the packages again if you are doing a fresh installation on your or other systems. You can restore the previously installed programs easily. Let’s see how we can do this in Ubuntu.

Installation:

First you have to install APTonCD.

You can install APTonCD from the Ubuntu Software Center.

                                         Fig1.Search APTonCD from Ubuntu Software Center

Or you can install it through your terminal. Run the following command:

         sudo apt-get install aptoncd

                  Fig2.Install APTonCD through terminal

Once installation is complete, you can launch it from the Dash.                             

                                                      Fig3.Launch APTonCD from Dash             

Backing up Packages:

After you launch it, you can see the following window. Click “Create” button to create a disc with your downloaded, cached deb packages on it. This copies packages from your APT cache located in the /var/cache/apt/archives/directory to the disc.

                                                Fig4.Starting screen to Create the backup.  

Next step is to select the packages which you would like to write to the disk. By default it selects all the packages but you can deselect them if you don’t want those packages to be written on the disc. And also you can add some additional packages you want by clicking the Add button.

                                                      Fig5.Selecting the packages.   

Once you have selected your packages then click the Burn button.

After you get a Window that allows you to select a CD or DVD image, give it a name and the location for the ISO image file, and select optionally create a meta-package.

                                          Fig6.Specifying the installation disc properties.

Click the Apply button and APTonCD will create an ISO image at the location you specified.                                               

                                                 Fig7.Creating the ISO image.


                                                      Fig8.Scanning the packages.

Once the image is created, you can have APTonCD launch a disc-burning application, Such as Brasero, to burn it to a disc immediately. You can burn the ISO image later also. And if you don’t have a disc drive, then there is nothing to worry, you can also save the ISO image as a file and you can transport it using a USB drive between computers.

                                                     Fig9.Burning the packages to the disc

Installing All Packages:

If you burnt the image to disc, you can insert it into your drive by opening it in a file manager window, and double-click the package named ”aptoncd-metapackage” to install it. This will install all packages available on the disc. The package will not be present if you didn’t have APTonCD create a meta-package.

                                                       Fig10.Selecting the aptoncd-metapackage.

If you have not burn into a disc and you have just an ISO image then you can mount it as a disc and install the packages from it.

Adding a Disc as a Repository:

The File -> Add CD/DVD option in APTonCD adds the disc to APT as a software source. The disc will be used as a repository in APT, so you can install packages from it using Synaptic, apt-get, or any other package management tools, even if you’re offline.

                                             Fig11.Adding CD or DVD as APT source.

Restoring Packages to Cache:

Before you click on the Load Button on the restore screen, you have to install the hal package on your system. To do so, run the following command:

                 sudo apt-get install hal

                   Fig12.Installing the hal packages.

Restart APTonCD after running this command and you’ll be able to restore packages by Restore button. You can restore packages to any of your system.

                                                       Fig13.Load the packages.

Use the Load button on the Restore screen to specify a disc drive or ISO image file.

                                                 Fig14.Selecting an ISO image.