How to track down the data of package installations
Hi,
I observed a really nasty problem on my laptop that seems to be caused by
some cross package relations that lets me wonder how I can find out, when
exactly a certain package was installed.
Here is the situation:
I update my laptop to recent testing more or less onm each working day
because I can easily sync a testing mirror. The first time I observed
the problem which is described below occured last Friday, so I would see
a connection to the packages that were installed from about 24. to 26.
of October. I observed that X stops accepting any inputs via keyboard
and I can move the mouse but no application is reacting on any click
event once I startet audacious under xfce4. I tried to verify
this with other WMs (fluxbox, sawfish, Gnome) - the problem did not
occure. I tried other audio players: rhythmbox - fine, xmms same:
problem: I can move the mouse cursor, but no other reaction.
Killing the audioplayer over network removes it from process list,
but the application sticks to the desktop and I tried to subsequently
kill other applications to try to get back control. I finally restartet
gdm which restored normal opperation. I also have the option to
press the power button which causes a halt of the machine. The
annoying thing is that also other applications tend to cause the
same problem, but not so easily reproducible: Sometimes a browser
(I prefer the good old Galeon, but I think firefox once had the same
effect), and probably some other applications.
So I think there is a problem with xfce4 - but I do not remmeber that
it was updated over the last two weeks. It might also be that a library
that is used by xfce4 causes the problem I described above. So I
do not have a good feeling in simply issuing a bug report against xfce4
which probably can not be reprodiced by the maintainer. I prefer to
have a list of the packages that were installed last week on my box
to roll back the changes using snapshot.debian.net and finally find
out whether the problem vanished after such a rollback and reappears
whe installing the recent version again. Than we at least could find
out which package is really responsible. So is there any chance to
find out the date when a package was installed on one side and find
out a list of packages that was installed on a certain date on the other
side.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
http://fam-tille.de
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