Re: dselect+apt -- how to clear cache?
On Thu, Dec 30, 1999 at 11:51:50PM -0500, Arcady Genkin wrote
> John Pearson <john@huiac.apana.org.au> writes:
>
> > See my reply to this list under the subject
> > > Re: Bad points for debian (was: resetting dpkg)
> >
> > I provided a perl scrpt that probably does what you want.
> > Please be careful to get the right message: I also posted
> > an awk script that was broken enough that you don't want
> > to use it.
>
> Hi, John,
>
> I just tried your script. Well, it didn't work. I suspect that I
> already did what it was going to do, manually. I went in and did a "+"
> on every package that had "*__" flag.
>
> It looks like the "status" lines in /var/lib/dpkg/status are what I
> want them to be, and yet, when choosing "Install" I am told that 38
> packages will be *removed*. Arrgh!
>
> ,----[ Here's a little script job: ]
> | tea:/var/lib/dpkg# chmod +x reset-selections.pl
> | tea:/var/lib/dpkg# ./reset-selections.pl > my-selections
> | tea:/var/lib/dpkg# less my-selections
> | tea:/var/lib/dpkg# cat my-selections | dpkg --set-selections
> | tea:/var/lib/dpkg# dselect
> | Reading Package Lists... Done
> | Building Dependency Tree... Done
> | Correcting dependencies... Done
> | The following packages will be REMOVED:
> | netscape-base-4 libmd5-perl libcurses-perl debhelper nosql
> | libcompress-zlib-perl libtime-hires-perl libdelimmatch-perl perl debmake
> | libhtml-parser-perl sysutils libterm-readkey-perl procmail-lib dupload
> | navigator-smotif-45 netscape-base-45 dftp cvs-buildpackage perl-suid
> | libio-stringy-perl devscripts pkg-order signify liblockdev0-perl dpkg-dev
> | quake2 netscape-java-45 perlmenu navigator-base-45 dpkg-ftp libnet-perl
> | libmime-base64-perl dpkg-repack xaw-wrappers debsums alias alien
> | 14 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 38 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> | 1 packages not fully installed or removed.
> | Need to get 4745kB/11.3MB of archives. After unpacking 25.6MB will be freed.
> | Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
> `----
>
Many of these packages depend on perl, which is one of the packages
marked for removal; if perl didn't get 're-selected' then that would
account for most of the removals listed. Are you upgrading from slink
to potato, or do you otherwise have perl5 or perl6 selected for
installation? What do you get when you go
# grep '^perl' my-selections
For that matter, what happens when you try
# apt-get dselect-upgrade
from the command line?
> Here's something interesting.
>
> ,----[ Snippage from /var/lib/dpkg/status: ]
> | Package: netscape-base-4
> | Status: install ok installed
> | [...]
> | Package: libmd5-perl
> | Status: install ok installed
> | [...]
> | Package: libcurses-perl
> | Status: install ok installed
> | [... and so on ...]
> `----
>
> So, as you see, all of the packages that dselect wants to _remove_ are
> not set to be removed in /var/lib/dpkg/status.
>
> Any ideas?
>
netscape-base-4 and perl are common dependencies for most of the
stuff that dselect wants to remove, and both conflict with other
packages that provide similar functionality (perl5,
netscape4 | netscape3); do you get any unexpected conflicts if you
select these packages for installation in dselect?
> What's gonna happen if I remove the /var/lib/dpkg/status* files
> altogether?
You get to reconstruct it by hand, or start from scratch, or both.
Don't do that :-)
John P.
--
huiac@camtech.net.au
john@huiac.apana.org.au
"Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." - Bill Gates in Denmark
Reply to: