dselect deinstalled all software!!!

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

Hi,

A friend of mine has emailed me in panic, saying that dselect has just
deinstalled all the software on his debian laptop.  He is currently
travelling in the US (he and I are from Australia) and he is in a bit
of a panic.  I am trying to acertain precisely what happened but I
suspect it was something like the following:

He did have slink installed, but it sounds like he did a "apt-get
dist-upgrade" to potato (it's not entirely clear to me whether he was
successful in this --- I'm checking with him).  He then went into
dselect to (using his own words) "install and configure the new
packages".  He goes on to write: "Then I did remove in dselect and
it seems to have removed everything!!!  I don't have my emergency
disc with me. When I start the machine the letters LI come on the
screen and then nothing more happens."

My guess is that he didn't do an "Update" within dselect before
choosing Remove, and dselect, not recognising any of the new packages,
decided to remove them all.  Does this sound right?  Or does any one
have any alternative explanations?

In the meantime, I'm trying to advise him from afar.  I am thinking he
needs to get a rescue disk from somewhere, which should allow him to
boot and then rerun apt-get dist-upgrade.  Does this sound right?

Any other suggestions?  Also, please cc any replies directly to my
email address as I am currently not subscribed to this list.

Thanks for your help.

Mark.



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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"