Problems with DSELECT
A few weeks ago, I purchased the one-CD Debian starter kit that
includes a copy of O'Reilly's Learning Debian. I managed to
install the files on the CD, and at the moment I have a working
text-based Debian system.
I would, however, like to have an *updated* working text-based
system, with Pico, the Unix editor I like best. I would also
like to be able to run X and to use Netscape. (The one-CD kit
included only the main, stable distribution; no contrib, no
non-free, no source, no potato). My video card is an STB
Velocity with 16 MB, and I find upon investigation that I need
some potato files to get it to run X.
I have tried, so far, FIVE times to use DSELECT to update my
install. I've used apt and successfully linked to the update
site; I've successfully updated the list of updates. I've then
started trying to do something useful with the list. DSELECT
tells me that my C++ 2.8.2 package is broken, and it then
apparently tries to remove everything that uses C++. If I go
straight to "install" without doing anything other than getting
the list of updates, the program asks me if I really want to
uninstall 90% of my system, which, of course, I don't.
If I persevere and start putting everything back to "install" or
even to "hold", then, invariably, after I've spent about two
hours patiently marking files "install" (yes, I'm marking by
category, but even that takes that long when you're talking about
a thousand files and when you have to try to unravel
dependencies), I will get to something which requires a version
of C++, and even if I don't mark C++ for removal or anything,
I'll find that, once again, it has marked everything that uses
C++ for removal, undoing nearly everything I have just done.
Installing piecemeal won't help because the darned thing
retroactively changes install/remove decisions and I'd still have
to clean up after it whenever this happens. Moreover, the one
time I let it get to the "Do you really want to uninstall 90% of
your system" stage, it was proposing to download 93 megs worth of
files. People, I have a 28.8 net connection and an ISP that
isn't all that reliable. The largest file I've *ever* d/led on
this system was about 30 megs, and I've tried unsuccessfully for
50 meg demos before.
It is obvious in retrospect that I ought to have bought the
four-CD set, though I'm not sure even that would have helped me,
since I need potato to run X. But I hate to spend *another* $20
for more CDs for an OS I'm not even certain I want to use -- I
just wanted to try out X, for Pete's sake!
Is there any way I can get the packages I need without all of
this infernal attempted removal of files I must have? I don't
know enough about Linux to do without those dependency alerts,
but I do know enough to know that I can't manage without the
required files DSELECT keeps trying to remove, which is more than
DSELECT seems to know! If I had a way to find out the
dependencies independently of DSELECT, maybe I could do something
manually, but I don't know how to do that.
--
Meredith Dixon <dixonm@access.mountain.net>
Check out *Raven Days*, for victims and survivors of bullying.
And for those who want to help.
http://web.mountain.net/~dixonm/raven.html
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