[DISASTEROUS RESULT!] Re: downgrade wants to rm coreutils!
I put kernel-image-2.4.20-686, the associated
pcmcia-modules and initrd-tools on hold and did a
download only of fileutils, textutils and shellutils
for later use. At this point I felt that the downgrade
was ready to go.
'apt-get dist-upgrade' ran fine, it took a while to go
fetch 100MB, so I left it to it! The setup of various
things failed due to dependencies so I ran 'apt-get -f
dist-upgrade' until I'd fixed it; it'd kept asking me
if I had libgnome-perl installed (no, so I installed
it) and there appeared to be problems with trying to
download some package and an associated lib (alas, I
forget which one) simltaneously, so I put the lib on
hold, continued the downgrade, took the lib off hold
and continued... It wasn't happy having the kernel
from testing on hold so I eventually took the 2.4.20
stuff and initrd-tools off hold and continued (I never
did get the 2.4.20 kernel working as well as I'd have
liked... I've others installed... I was using one of
them at the time...), so apt-get removed them and
downgraded initrd-tools....
Bingo, I thought. All attempts to run any form of
upgrade, dist-upgrade & install with -f flag had no
complaints and dpkg found no traces of packages from
testing left over. I changed my apt-pinning to move
from a downgrade to upgrade mode and apt-get was still
perfectly happy with my installation not wanting to
pull in anything from testing to fix my system or what
have you...
At this point I logged out of KDE and didn't get back
to gdm (I had been running gdm2 from the gnome 2.0
backport), just a command line login. Hell I thought,
it'd just be a question of reconfiguring a few things
so I shut the machine down to move it to its new
location. When it got there, kernel 2.4.19 failed to
boot (this was already on the machine when I inherited
it, maybe installed in a non-Debian way, apt-get
didn't pick it up for deletation during downgrade but
I guess I removed something it needed :( ), it got
pretty far along in the process but hung at the line
'initializing file alteration monitor: FAM' or
something like that...
Still, I have a 2.2 series kernel on the machine and
that booted fine (again, this was a legacy
installation, I'd never even booted into it before...
just as well it worked!), but still just get a dumb
terminal effect login. From the boot message it looks
like it picked up my pcmica modem but it didn't find
the pon/poff commands that I normally use to
connect/disconnect to my isp.
So, how on earth do I go about figuring out what's
missing/broken?, I'm feeling a bit out of my depth
here... I guess I could then just download the debs
and, assuming I can mount the floppy drive from the
2.2 kernel, install them and get the system fixed.
Clearly I should've kept track of what I
downgraded/removed... but maybe this information is
still stored somewhere...?!
Thanks for the help, sorry this is rather a long
spiel!
--- Antonio Rodriguez <arodriguez31@cfl.rr.com>
wrote: > these files should be loaded after you do
> apt-get update, apt-get install with sources.list
> pointing to woody.
> if not, try
> apt-get install fileutils-etc
> let us know it it works
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Simon Tod" <todsr1@yahoo.co.uk>
> To: "Antonio Rodriguez" <arodriguez31@cfl.rr.com>;
> <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 3:47 PM
> Subject: Re: downgrade wants to rm coreutils!
>
>
> > Thanks for the ref. Seems to be *about* ready to
> go
> > but I'm still not able to get rid of the coreutils
> > problem. The dpkg -i --force-overwritee lines
> don't
> > work, I get the error
> >
> > dpkg -i --force-overwrite
> > /var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb
> > dpkg: error processing
> > /var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb
> > (--install):
> > cannot access archive: No such file or directory
> > Errors were encountered while processing:
> > /var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb
> >
> > I guess this is because I regularly run apt-get
> clean
> > so there's very little in the archive...
> >
> >
> > Looking through /var/lib/dpkg/status I find
> >
> > Package: fileutils
> > Essential: yes
> > Status: install ok installed
> > Priority: required
> > Section: basei
> > Installed-Size: 1928
> > Maintainer: Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org>
> > Version: 4.1-10
> > Replaces: color-ls, util-linux (<= 2.7.1-1)
> > Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-4)
> > Conflicts: color-ls
> >
> > so this looks to me that the version from stable
> is
> > the one I've got installed at the moment, rather
> than
> > that from testing, and the same with shellutils
> and
> > textutils. Surely then they don't need
> > downgrading....? Why the coreutils warning then,
> or am
> > I still missing something?!
> >
> > THANKS!
> >
> >
> > > I did a downgrade to stable 2 days ago, from
> > > testing. It was a whole
> > > adventure. The best guide was:
> > > http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=880
> > > and among all, the way I followed was the
> second,
> > > the one that starts with:
> > >
> > > %%%%% starts here
> > >
> > > Subject: APT pinning and how to fix gliches of
> the
> > > results
> > > Author: osamu
> > > Date: Tuesday, 2003/02/18 - 05:09
> > >
> > > One of the "Debian Reference" reader's comment
> on
> > > the downgrading experience
> > > and my comments for that. Anyway, as few other
> posts
> > > already pointed out,
> > > APT pinning is the way to downgrade system.
> > >
> > > Downgrading from testing to stable
> > >
> > > By Auke Jilderda <auke@jilderda.net> Thu Dec 26
> > > 07:22:28 2002
> > >
> > > %%%%%% etc
> > >
> > > I had the same problem that you describe with
> > > coreeutils, however, after
> > > applying the dpkg -i --force etc
> > > it went smoothly. In several cases (not
> described
> > > here) I applied the same
> > > recipe, run apt-get upgrade several times, even
> had
> > > to remove all
> > > directories containing gdm2 by hand, since I had
> > > gnome2 in my system and I
> > > wanted to get back to pure woody.
> > > Notice that after doing
> > >
> > > dpkg -i --force-overwrite
> > >
> /var/cache/apt/archives/fileutils_4.1-10_i386.deb
> > > dpkg -i --force-overwrite
> > >
> >
>
/var/cache/apt/archives/shellutils_2.0.11-11_i386.deb
> > > dpkg -i --force-overwrite
> > >
> /var/cache/apt/archives/textutils_2.0-12_i386.deb
> > >
> > > the problem with coreutils vanished.
> > >
> > > Mailman refused any attempt to be downgraded,
> same
> > > for libpaperg,
> > > common-lis-controller.
> > > I also had to several times run "apt-get -f
> install"
> > > after removing by hand
> > > stubborn packages.
> > > Finally, add the security lines to your
> > > sources.list, run dselect several
> > > times, combined with apt-get, and you should
> have a
> > > pure woody back.
> > > One interesting remark is that after apt-get
> upgrade
> > > was indicating all ok,
> > > still dselect was able to find about a hundred
> or so
> > > packages to be removed
> > > and downgraded.
> > > Any way, after doing all that and more that I
> didn't
> > > write down (sorry for
> > > that), I finally have back a pure woody station.
> > > Testing is great, but since
> > > I have that machine dedicated to some serious
> work,
> > > I couldn't afford the
> > > some times instability of broken packages.
> > > Enjoy,
> > > AR
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Simon Tod" <todsr1@yahoo.co.uk>
> > > To: <debian-user@lists.debian.org>
> > > Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 4:11 PM
> > > Subject: downgrade wants to rm coreutils!
> > >
> > >
> > > > Wishing to downgrade a mixed box to stable I
> moved
> > > > /etc/apt/apt.conf out the way, commented out
> all
> > > the
> > > > lines corresponding to backports from
> > > > /etc/apt/sources.list and wrote
> > > /etc/apt/preferences
> > > > pinning stable at 1001 and testing at 550.
> After
> > > an
> > > > apt-get update I ran apt-get -s dist-upgrade
> and
> > > got 2
> > > > problems...
> > > >
> > > > 1. It wants to remove kernel-image-2.4.20-686
> and
> > > the
> > > > associated pcmcia-modules - not a surprise,
> but
> > > how do
> > > > I stop this happening? Tried to pin them at
> 1000
> > > and
> > > > even removed the
> > > > Package: *
> > > > Pin: release a=testing
> > > > Pin-Priority: 550
> > > > entry from /etc/apt/preferences as well, all
> to no
> > > > avail.
> > > >
> > > > 2. I get the message
> > > >
> > > > WARNING: The following essential packages will
> be
> > > > removed
> > > > This should NOT be done unless you know
> exactly
>
=== message truncated ===
=====
-----------------------
Simon Tod
todsr1@yahoo.co.uk
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