Re: dselect deinstalled all software!!!

[Erik Ryberg <ryberg@seanet.com>]

Mark Phillips wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

It sounds to me like he installed a package which conflicted with some
or much of the rest of his software and he didn't pay attention during
Select, just hit return when it asked him what he wanted to do, and it
solved the conflict by annihilating what he already had installed.  Then
he continued not paying attention when he hit "Configure."  Configure
then broke something important.  

What to do?  Hmm.  Find a local LUG?

-- 
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