Re: potato broke X :(

[David Coe <david@someotherplace.org>]

Ron Farrer <rbf@toxic.magnesium.net> writes:

[...]

> The only thing in '/root/.xsession-errors' is:
> X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

[...]

> # dpkg --print-avail xserver*
> Package 'xserver' is not available.
> 
> WTF? Did I do something wrong in the command?

Yeah there is no package named 'xserver', and dpkg --print-avail
doesn't expand wildcards (you'd want to quote it anyway, as
'xserver*', but that doesn't work either).  It wants a specific list
of package names.

A better tool for that kind of question is 'sgrep,' which allows you
to grep for contents in structured text files, and comes with the
definitions for dpkg-format 'available' and 'status' files already
configured.

We want to know is what x11 packages you've asked it to install and
what their status and versions are.  We can ask that question almost
directly:

  sgrep -e '(DEB_PKG containing (DEB_SECTION containing "x11")) containing  (DEB_STATUS containing "install")' < /var/lib/dpkg/status  |  grep '^Package: \|^Status: \|^Version: '

The output from that will at least give me enough to start asking
other questions ;-).

Thanks for your patience and persistence...