Re: problems+suggestions

[Jiri Baum <jiri@baum.com.au>]

Hello,


Did you *intend* to upgrade to slink? I have the feeling that you might be
upgrading to it inadvertently, which would explain most of your problems...

If so, you'll have to consider what you want to do now. In general, unless you
have a particular reason to go for unstable or frozen, it's probably best to
stick with the stable distribution as much as possible. However, if you got
this far already, it might be easier to stay here than to go back.


Glossary:
  2.0 = hamm = stable      (the latest released version)
  2.1 = slink = frozen     (the next version, not yet released)
  2.2 = potato = unstable  (the version after that)

> I'll take the suggestion first :)

Others already answered this.

BTW, many Debian programs will give you a short help text if you run them with
just a --help switch, for example:

  dpkg --help

> And well, wouldn't it be possible to have a HUGE warning if trying to remove
> things that dselect (or whatever package program running) depends on?

Actually, dselect won't let you do that at all, and the dpkg help says:
"WARNING - use of options marked [!] can seriously damage your installation."
for the relevant option.

> dselect: error in loading shared libraries
> /usr/lib/libstdc++-libc6.0-1.so.2: undefined symbol
> __register__frame__info
> 
> What deb(s) do I have to do to fix it?

Actually, this isn't a problem with a missing deb, it's a miscompiled library.

You'll need to download the very latest libstdc++ (check Incoming just to make
sure) and manually install that:

  dpkg -i filename.deb

> As if that wasn't enough, I can't start X anymore after upgrading the
> hardware. I swapped motherboard+mem+kbd+mouse(from ps/2 to serial). It
> just hangs on a black screen or the gray grid like screen at X startup..

Two suggestions:

  (a) Fix the __register_frame_info problem first, just in case it's related.

  (b) If you are upgrading to slink from hamm, the X packages were
  reorganized; you'll be almost certainly missing xterm, and maybe other
  things. Make sure you either have the old xbase or the new xterm (depending
  on what you want to do).

  (xterm is the program that gives you a command prompt in X)


HTH

Jiri <jiri@baum.com.au>