Re: Fwd: Re: Kde metapackage

["John Gay" <jgay@Celestica.com>]

<QUOTE>
after my previous, erroneous, message to the list, i did install the kde
metapackage, with the same results you did.  after the first failure, i did
an apt-get -f install, allowed it to "remove" the as yet-uninstalled
packages, configure and install the ones it could.  then, i did another
apt-get -t unstable install kde, which resolved most of the problems.  one
further apt-get -t unstable install kde cleared up all installation
problems.

my only "gripe" to the moment is that my previous desktop settings, as
regards themes, icon size,  were erased by the new control center.  that's
easy to work around though

thanks ivan for your work.

bob
</QUOTE>
I was not willing to sacrifice all my previous settings, at least any that
didn't need to be lost.

My solution was:

apt-get -t unstable install kde

This installed many packages, but several failed to install properly due to
the same file coming from different packages between the two versions. This
left me with a rather broken KDE2.1.2 but running with the latest libc6 and
kdelibs32.2.1 and several others that did install.

The sugested resolution was run apt-get -f install, but this wanted to
remove ALL of KDE. I did not let this run.

Instead I used dpkg --force-overwrite to install all the 2.2.1 packages
that failed to install properly the first time. This generated lots of
errors about trying to replace files provided by other packages, but with
the force-overwrite option it eventually suceeded.

I ran apt-get -t unstable install kde one more time and this sucessfully
installed the rest of KDE2.2.1 fo me! This also kept most of my previous
KDE setting! At least the ones that were equivulent. This gave me back my
kmail and konqueror. NOTE! I did need to apt-get -t unstable install
kdebase-crypto seperately before konqueror worked, but nothing is perfect
when dealing with unstable!

In conclusion. This took a lot of work, but I don't think the kde
metapackage was ever designed for upgrading an existing KDE installation.
I'm sure that if I had a fresh Woody system without KDE, this would have
been quite painless, but the upgrade, due to several package changes beyond
Ivan's control creates lot of headaches. I don't know if the
force-overwrite can be enabled in the kde metapackage, but this might make
an upgrade easier.

Ivan still provides some of the best support and I want to compliment him
on his tireless work keeping KDE more up-to-date than most of Debian!

Cheers,

     John Gay