apt confusion

[Alex Dean]

Yes, that helps a great deal!  I have heard about 'virtual packages' and 
tripped across various notices about them in messing around with this 
box.  I'll try to find more information about them.

I don't think I could have ever managed a qMail install without 'Life 
With Qmail'.  It was still a multi-day task, as I'd never built anything 
from source before, but in the end it works.  That was on a Redhat 
system, and now I want to give the same process a shot on Debian.  
Hopefully it will go quicker the second time around.

On another note : I had to install courier-imap to provide IMAP and 
webmail.  That package also comes with a pop server, as well as pops and 
imaps servers.  Anyone out there have a preference between the courier 
pop or qmail-pop3?  I'm using courier right now just for the sake of 
consistency.

thanks again,
alex

Ben Browning wrote:

>Hey Alix,
>
>The problem you are having is that exim provides a virtual package-
>mail-transport-agent - that those services need
>
>What I do to do this is as follows:
>
>0) shutdown exim
>1) Install qmail (I use lifewithqmail with my local modifications
>spliced in)
>2) Setup the sendmail symlinks
>3) (IMPORTANT) dpkg-divert the sendmail symlinks. This will keep dpkg
>(and thus apt) from overwriting them and will instead overwrite a
>diversion file in the same dir
>4) (IMPORTANT) change all /etc/rc#.d/S*exim4* links to K links. DONT
>REMOVE THEM or apt will replace them when exim gets upgrades
>
>At this point exim is disabled and qmail can go about its business
>unimpeded.
>
>The alternate many Debian purists will suggest is to create a "stub"
>package for qmail with equivs that provides mail-transport-agent- If you
>want to try that I have such a stub package up at
>http://www.oz.net/~empty/equivs-qmail_1.0_all.deb . In my experience
>though it's not a big difference one way or the other and you lose a few
>things (notably for me the mail command, which I pipe a lot of crap to ;)
>
>Hope this info helps!
>
>~Ben
>  
>