Re: Okay to remove obsolete required packages like "base"?

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

> > Now when I try and purge "base", I get:
> > 
> > # dpkg --remove base 
> > dpkg: error processing base (--remove):
> >  This is an essential package - it should not be removed.
> > Errors were encountered while processing:
> >  base
> > 
> > Now I presume I should do some kind of forced purge, but I'm a bit
> > reluctant to remove an "essential" package --- is it okay to do this?
> 
> NO!!!!!!!! DO NOT REMOVE BASE! IT WILL KILL YOUR SYSTEM!!!

Thanks for this, I think perhaps I'll wait.

I had presumed that given slink is to be released officially in about
21 hours time, that virtually all the bugs, if not all the bugs, would
have been fixed by now.  Guess I was wrong.

Hmm, now this leads me to a bit of a dilemma, I want to install some new
packages.  I was hoping apt-get would be able to do this for me, but it
seems that apt-get will only install commandline explicitly stated packages.
Ie, I wanted to be able to select stuff using dselect, and then exit and use
apt-get to do the work.  Unfortunately it would seem this is not possible.
What is possible is to use the apt method in dselect to install new
packages, but it would seem this is not safe, as I get the following:

Updating package status cache...done
Checking system integrity...ok
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gdk-imlib-nonfree1 base 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gdk-imlib1 fvwm2 xf86setup talkd imlib-progs libjpeg62-dev xmanpages telnetd
  libhtml-parser-perl netpbm telnet nfs-server talk 
WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
  base base base 
3 packages upgraded, 13 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 9804k of archives. After unpacking 9637k will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n

So, here's my problem: how do I install new packages safely, without 
specifying them one by one on the commandline?

Thanks again,

Mark.


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