We can ignore debian-binary because it contains just the characters 2.0 presumably referring to the version. This will untar three files, namely, and debian-binary. To study them I downloaded mysql-server-5.5_5.5.54-0ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64 which closely matches MySQL server 5.5.50 in the TikiWiki post.ĭeb packages are archives. For this section it helps to download an existing deb package. You can get MySQL 5.5.50 here and instructions on how to install it here. Now what I’ll cover here is how to write a simple post-copying installation and uninstallation deb package for MySQL 5.50. The dummy packages appear just like any other installed package on dpkg’s list and can even be used to appear to satisfy a dependency when installing other software.īut if you really want to install a software properly, you have to go through the complications of writing a deb package. This can be useful if you are using Ansible or some other mass orchestration tool to track which machines have a particular software version installed if you installed those manually. What’s that? Its a fake package which makes your software appear in the dpkg list when you do dpkg -l. The Debian Administrator handbook has a couple of relevant sections. The first thing I came across was how to write a dummy package.

Whether in Infosec or as a Linux sysadmin you may find the need to install outdated apps for which the deb packages are no longer available. There are ways to avoid that, most notably Vulhub or VulApps which already provide containerised Docker environments which you just need to pull down to install.īut recently I began to wonder how to write a Debian installer package (since Ubuntu is based on Debian). In previous posts on creating a vulnerable environment I spent some time going over how to install the vulnerable dated software versions and the required dependencies.

Install deb package