|
Hello Debian users!
I've recently installed Debian
(Potato) on a personal computer, and I'm having some difficulty with the package
manager (dpkg) that came with it. The problem came up after I installed
the Ximian Gnome packages (via apt-get). Once that had completed, I had a
working copy of Ximian Gnome (and all it's other installed applications).
I then decided to upgrade XFree86 to v4.1. During the upgrade, I
backed up and removed the contents of /etc/X11 and /usr/X11R6, just to start
fresh.
Once I had XFree86 4.1
installed, I needed to re-install some of the Ximian Gnome packages (namely gdm,
as it's config rested in /etc/X11/gdm). Upon running `dpkg --install', I
found that it never actually install gdm. Sure enough, it created the
directory structure under /etc/X11/gdm, but there were no files to speak
of. The backup I had displayed a number of files (sessions and config
data). I tried `dpkg --install' again, and put it in the background.
I noticed during the install, that it was creating the proper files that I was
missing, but they were suffixed with '.dpkg-new'. Once `dpkg --install'
had completed, it removed those files rather than renaming them (to chop the
.dpkg-new off). Hence my problem.
So the question is, why
did dpkg not install the files properly? Obviously it's keeping track
of what's installed (or should I say, what it *thinks* is installed).
dpkg's assumptions don't help me, however, and I can't be certain my
applications are installed correctly if it goes removing things after the
fact. How can I force dpkg to *forget* about what I've already installed,
so I can install it again? Better yet, is there a way to force a
proper re-install with dpkg?
One way I've found to
re-install, is to use `dpkg-deb --extract <filename> /', but that's not
good, as it kind of defeats the point of dpkg, as dpkg is used to not only
extract, but to configure things you install as well, correct? I've also
found another way, which is to remove the list
files associated with a program (I think I found them in
/var/lib/dpkg/status/info/* ??). Again, this defeats the point of dpkg, as
dpkg should be a package manager on it's own accord, so I shouldn't need to be
deleting things. Of course, after deleting a bunch of those list files,
dpkg complains whenever I run it that it's missing things. It would be
great if someone could tell me how to repair this as well...
So thats it, I hope someone can
help me out here. I've posted to a local Linux group as well, but to no
avail.
-David Fuchs
|