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Similar problems to https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/235795/use-dpkg-in-busybox

Hi! I was excited to find that dpkg came with newer versions of busybox, so I set to work installing a package. I collected all the dependencies for apt, and ran:
dpkg -i *.deb Unfortunately, there was an error!
dpkg: Unable to open /var/lib/dpkg/status: no such file or directory
Ok, I dealt with that, creating directories /var/lib/dpkg, then making empty file /var/lib/dpkg/status. Then I tried again:
dpkg -i *.deb dpkg: package libtasn1-6 pre-depends on multiarch-support, which is not installed or flagged to be installed
So I tried to install multiarch-support, but it depends on libc6, which depends on libgcc, which depends on multiarch-support. I also tried to install them all on the same line, but same dependency error happened.
So I tried to install libgcc with --force-depends , but now it complains about not having /var/lib/dpkg/info/libgcc1.md5sums, so I create info directory, it gets a little farther, but then:
sh: /var/lib/dpkg/info/libgcc1.postinst: No such file or directory dpkg: postinst failed, error code 256

What am I missing? Is there some way to set up busybox's dpkg so that it can actually install packages?

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  • How did you get dpkg running on Android? What device, android version and ROM? – ddnomad Mar 31 '17 at 18:57
  • dpkg and rpm are included with busybox, but device is Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, Unlegacy Android 6.01(Marshmallow) – Panda0nEarth Mar 31 '17 at 18:59
  • Is your device rooted? Most of the time you won't be able to setup something far then bundled with busybox packages on Android. The reason is mostly because android is heavily modified version of Linux and most of the packages won't work properly. – ddnomad Mar 31 '17 at 19:04
  • Device is rooted. Are you saying it's pointless to try to install packages with busybox's dpkg? Anyway, from what I can see the installation problem seems to be from a dpkg missing a bunch of files, right? – Panda0nEarth Mar 31 '17 at 19:09
  • Well, I would go with an installation of a full-blown Linux distro using dedicated apps from Play Store (i.e. play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.meefik.linuxdeploy) and won't bother trying to force dpkg to behave correctly. It misses some libs which probably means that it was either broken installation or the structure of directories of Android simply is not compatible with it. – ddnomad Mar 31 '17 at 19:13
up vote 3 down vote

Running the dpkg utility is one thing, installing a distribution is another. To get a distribution running, you need to install a bunch of packages, and to work around the fact that with the most fundamental utilities, pretty much everything depends on everything else working. It's a bootstrapping problem.

Fortunately, there's an app for that! Debootstrap is designed for exactly this purpose. I think you can get Deboostrap to run on a system with BusyBox, but it's probably simpler to use its two-phase mode:

  1. Get debootstrap (available as a package in Debian, of course, but also in several other distributions) and run it on a Linux PC to prepare a directory tree.

    debootstrap --arch=armhf --foreign jessie debian

  2. Copy the directory tree to your device with BusyBox, making sure to preserve file attributes. Use tar to archive the directory and unpack it on the target device.

  3. On the target device, chroot to where you've unpacked the archive, and run

    /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage
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