On Jul 10, 2025, Lee Winter wrote:

Got a dell 5400 workstation configured fully (8 cores, 32gb RAM, 160gb
fast disk & 1.0tb slow disk) and I netinstalled debian Bookworm
12.10.0 on it. I also got the 20 DVDs with 92.5gb of Source packages.
The machine seems OK, but I am finding some [problem]s.

[A1] is that netinstall left /etc/sudoers missing and
/etc/sudoers.d/README empty -- there are no users at all. But that
README file contains a strongrecommendation for using visudo, which no
longer exists.

Did you create a root password during installation?

If so, (I believe) the result is that the installer skips the 'sudo'
package in general. Also, (/usr)/sbin/visudo would not be in your
user's $PATH; you'd need to first 'su -'.

[A2] is that visudo is missing even though lots of doc still insists that
it be should be used. I even looked for it in my SOURCE packages and with apt install. But I found nothing.

(/usr)/sbin/visudo is part of the 'sudo' package. While it is installed
on this machine; I'm 95% sure I did that some time after initial
installation.

https://blog.usro.net/2024/11/how-to-build-a-debian-package-from-source-a-step-by-step-guide
"

[B] is that the doc in the url above wants to apt install some thing
called linti. But in reality there is no such thing.

Probably best to use Debian's own packaging guide, if you want to make packages:

https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/build.en.html

That being said, the post you referenced is telling you to install
'lintian'; which does exist.

[C] is that same doc in the url above wants to apt install source <package_name>. So it wants to get a new copy of the source package. But
I already have a copy; i just need to know where to put it?

Pretty much, where ever you want to use as your build directory.
Though, I still don't quite understand why you're trying to (re-?) build
a debian package, given your starting point of "where's visudo?".


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|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Us

On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 07:13:48AM -0400, Lee Winter wrote:

Got a dell 5400 workstation configured fully (8 cores, 32gb RAM, 160gb fast disk & 1.0tb slow disk) and I netinstalled debian Bookworm 12.10.0 on it.
I also got the 20 DVDs with 92.5gb of Source packages. The machine seems
OK, but I am finding some [problem]s.

[A1] is that netinstall left /etc/sudoers missing and /etc/sudoers.d/README empty -- there are no users at all. But that README file contains a strong recommendation for using visudo, which no longer exists.

Hi Lee,

When you originally set up the system, did you input a password for root?

If you *didn't* set up a root user / left the root user with a blank
password, then sudo should be installed and configured for the first
user to use sudo. If not, then there's maybe a bug.

If you reboot via rescue mode, you can set a password for root.

If you don't wish to do this, then you may be able to drop to a root shell
and install sudo

Visudo is installed with the sudo package. If that install fails for
whatever reason, then you won't have visudo.

Hope this helps,

Andy
(amacater@debian.org)

[A2] is that visudo is missing even though lots of doc still insists that
it be should be used. I even looked for it in my SOURCE packages and with apt install. But I found nothing.

url = " https://blog.usro.net/2024/11/how-to-build-a-debian-package-from-source-a-step-by-step-guide
"

[B] is that the doc in the url above wants to apt install some thing called linti. But in reality there is no such thing.

[C] is that same doc in the url above wants to apt install source <package_name>. So it wants to get a new copy of the source package. But
I already have a copy; i just need to know where to put it?

How should I report these problems?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, Jul 10, 2025 at 07:13:48 -0400, Lee Winter wrote:

[A1] is that netinstall left /etc/sudoers missing and /etc/sudoers.d/README empty -- there are no users at all. But that README file contains a strong recommendation for using visudo, which no longer exists.

[A2] is that visudo is missing even though lots of doc still insists that
it be should be used. I even looked for it in my SOURCE packages and with apt install. But I found nothing.

It sounds like sudo is not installed, which is completely normal if you supplied a root password during the installation.

If you want to use sudo at this point, you can do:

$ su
# PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
# apt update
# apt install sudo
# adduser "$LOGNAME" sudo

After this, you will need to log out and back in to update your group memberships. The final command (adduser) will place your regular account
into the sudo group, but this only takes effect at login time.

url = " https://blog.usro.net/2024/11/how-to-build-a-debian-package-from-source-a-step-by-step-guide
"

<https://wiki.debian.org/BuildingTutorial> would probably be a better
starting point. (This page is not easy to find! I had to give up
traversing the wiki and resort to a Google search. I'm astonished
that <https://wiki.debian.org/Source> did not exist, nor give any
relevant existing pages.)

The unofficial IRC channel also has some extremely terse instructions
for building packages from source:

07:24 ->[dpkg] msgsimple sid backport
07:24 Irssi: Starting query in libera with dpkg
07:24 =dpkg> First, check for a backport on <debian-backports>. If
unavailable: 1) Add a deb-src line for sid (not a deb line!); ask
me about <deb-src sid> 2) enable debian-backports (see <bdo>) 3)
apt update; apt install build-essential; apt build-dep packagename
4) apt -b source packagename 5) dpkg -i packagename-ver.deb To
change compilation options, see <package recompile>; for versions
newer than sid see <uupdate>.

[C] is that same doc in the url above wants to apt install source <package_name>. So it wants to get a new copy of the source package. But
I already have a copy; i just need to know where to put it?

When compiling from source, it doesn't matter where you put the
source code. Most people will either create a subdirectory underneath
$HOME and do all their compiling/packaging work there, or create
a subdirectory underneath /tmp or /var/tmp, or simply do all the work
directly in /tmp, especially if they expect to throw it away when
they're done.

The most important point is:

* Do all your package building AS YOURSELF, NOT AS ROOT.

Once you understand this rule, then "where" is "wherever you have
write permission", which means your home directory, or a writable
temp dir.

The commands you run to build the package will work on files in your
current directory, so wherever you decide to do your work, you just
mkdir that place, and then cd to that place. That's it.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Lee Winter <lee.j.i.winter@gmail.com> writes:

[A1] is that netinstall left /etc/sudoers missing and /etc/sudoers.d/README empty -- there are no users at all. But that
README file contains a strong recommendation for using visudo, which no longer exists.

visudo is included in the sudo package. I'd expect you have
/usr/sbin/visudo if you have /etc/sudoers.d but don't really know.

[A2] is that visudo is missing even though lots of doc still insists that it be should be used. I even looked for it in
my SOURCE packages and with apt install. But I found nothing.

apt-file search visudo finds visudo in package sudo. You can also use https://www.debian.org/distrib/packages to search for contents of
packages.

url = "https://blog.usro.net/2024/11/how-to-build-a-debian-package-from-source-a-step-by-step-guide"

[B] is that the doc in the url above wants to apt install some thing called linti. But in reality there is no such
thing.

Looks like the package in question is lintian.

[C] is that same doc in the url above wants to apt install source <package_name>. So it wants to get a new copy of the
source package. But I already have a copy; i just need to know where to put it?

It seems to me if you intend to build packages from source, you need to
unpack the source package first and that's done via tar Jxvf
package.tar.xz or you can also dpkg-source -x package.dsc. apt source is convenient in that it does the downloading and unpacking for you by default.

I suppose you could configure apt to look on the DVD drive first for
your source packages. Then you'd only need to make sure the correct DVD
is in the drive and apt source would copy and unpack the source package
from there.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)