[Techtalk] really basic debian question

[James Allen]

> If here's okay, my question is: how do I install a package in debian if
> there is not debian pkg for it?  That's the embarassing part - I remember
> doing a makefile a year or so ago, but cannot remember the basics now.
> I'm trying to use sshfs to attach the Unix servers here to my beautiful
> debian desktop, and the apt-get install for that worked great, but then
> there was no fuse. The fuse documentation seems to assume one must
> recompile the kernel?  Or can just the fuse module be installed?
> Kathleen

james at apollo:~$ apt-cache search sshfs
shfs-source - (secure) SHell File System module source
shfs-utils - (secure) SHell File System mount programs
sshfs - filesystem client based on SSH File Transfer Protocol

james at apollo:~$ apt-cache show shfs-source
Package: shfs-source
Priority: optional
Section: misc
Installed-Size: 52
Maintainer: Eduard Bloch <blade at debian.org>
Architecture: all
Source: shfs
Version: 0.35-2
Depends: module-assistant, debhelper (>> 3.0.0), debconf, bzip2
Recommends: shfs-utils
Conflicts: shfs
Filename: pool/main/s/shfs/shfs-source_0.35-2_all.deb
Size: 35426
MD5sum: 000d06fc25eb54d77a0476165c959750
Description: (secure) SHell File System module source
 SHFS (sshfs) is a simple and easy to use Linux kernel (2.4/2.6) module
 which allows you to mount remote filesystems using (secure) shell
 connection.
 .
 This package contains the prepared source for shfs kernel module.
 You can use the module-assistant tool to build the binary modules or
 compile them manually.  If you are lucky, the module may already be
 available, watch out for shfs-module-* packages.