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Old 05-14-2021, 12:56 PM   #79
clepsydrae
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Quote:
Originally Posted by eq1 View Post
"W: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/root/.synaptic/tmp//tmp_sh' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)."
You can safely ignore that. "W" is a warning, not an error, and it's just alerting you to a security thing relating to the install process that shouldn't affect anything in terms of success/failure of package installation.

Linux installs software via "packages". On Ubuntu, which is a downstream fork of Debian linux, use the ".deb" package format (different distros will use other formats). You get .deb packages built for Ubuntu and you can install them.

As you have seen, they can (and usually do) depend on other packages to be installed.

"Apt" is the package manager used on Ubuntu. You can call it from the CLI directly ("apt") or using wrapper scripts (e.g. "sudo apt-get install blah"). It maintains a notion of what packages are available in the repositories it knows about, monitors dependencies, calls other utilities to install the .deb files, and so forth.

What you experienced is known as "dependency hell" and it's annoying. Usually this is handled by the package manager being told to install dependencies. E.g. if you say "sudo apt-get install gimp" it will likely prompt you with all the other packages it wants to install in order to install gimp so you can review to make sure it's sane to move forward.

But dealing with packages without an internet connection can be a pain because the package manager can't figure things out for you. Unfortunately you won the lottery with one of the few internet setups that linux can't just make work automatically. These days things are usually pretty smooth in that regard, but on an older system and with the wrong card you can have troubles. Kudos on sticking it out and getting through the forest! Take copious notes in case you have to reinstall and can't remember what you did.

When you install a .deb file manually (meaning, not through a package manager but using "dpkg" or similar), dependencies may not be handled, necessitating manually traversing the tree yourself. Being stuck without a net connection makes this more likely.

Usually users will use some higher-level app to install packages, rather than apt on the CLI. Sometimes these higher-level apps is what people are loosely referring to when they say "package manager". Synaptic is great, and is my preferred package utility. It has traditionally been smarter and more effective than the built-in apps distros use, like "Software Center" or "Software Manager" or "Muon Package Manager" and so on. I avoid those. There are lots of these cases in the linux world, unfortunately, where things are put together in a nice well-intentioned GUI in an attempt to make it user-friendly, but it's half-implemented under the hood and doesn't actually work sometimes and you wonder why it's even included. (Then 5 years later it finally works fine and has to shed a bad reputation.)

I'm afraid I can't help with your card-specific stuff.
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