Re: dpkg: Update failures
Yang Shouxun wrote:
> I found Debian's package management strategy often frustrated me.
i haven't.
> Because I'm behind a Wingate, I don't have direct access to http or ftp.
that can be a problem. im not sure what kind of proxy wingate is.
> Someone suggests set http_proxy and ftp_proxy in /etc/environment, but
> that seems to be not working. In a word, I cannot find any hostname in a
> terminal, and apt-get won't work for me.
how do you do dns on other machines?
> All I do was to manually
> download all the packages required by dependency and ran `dpkg -i
> foo.deb baz.deb' and all troubles came as a result.
which packages? maybe it would of been better to download the ISOs
or buy pre made cds from some company.
>
> I tried to upgrade perl5.6, xfree86-4, mozilla-0.8.1, and netscape-4.76,
> all gave me frustrating experience.
any particular reason you need perl 5.6 and xfree86 4? perl 5.6 is
not part of debian stable(for good reason if you've read the archives
it is a source of problems from time to time in unstable). same
for xfree86 4, it is not "stable" yet so it is not in the sable
distribution(and last i tried to find 3rd party .debs for it
i could not..). same for mozilla 0.8.1. so basically anything
thats not "part of the system" you should not be suprised if
there are problems. in general they may not be, but both
xfree86 4 and perl 5.6 are major system components and if
they are even slightly broken it can(as you've seen) cause
major problems.
I'm not so lucky with perl5.6, because of circular dependency
> between perl and debconf. I have to compile perl5.6.1 myself and install
> it to /usr/local. When I attempted to upgrade mozilla-M18_3 to
> mozilla-0.8.1 and failed, I made another attempt to install
> netscape-4.76 and found that failed as well. Now the system was left
> with some libraries in a mess.
i use netscape 4.76 everyday, i install it via 'apt-get install
communicator'. you must have the non-free listing in your
sources.list provided you can use apt. or maybe you can get an
ISO(i dont think they are official) of a non-free cd, and/or get
a pre made cd of the non-us archive, if your network gateway isn't
linux friendly.
>
> I really hate the circular dependency in Debian packages. That's really
> frustrating and time-consuming and can render the system in disorder.
I hate to say it but the problems your having were caused by you
wanting to use knowingly unstable program versions. you probably
should of asked the list before attempting what you did as some
people may of been able to warn you ahead of time what you were
getting into.
>
> Has anybody run into the same problem?
never. i only run the stable version of debian on the couple
dozen machines i run linux on. never have ever touched the
testing and/or unstable distributions(even on "testing" systems)
the closest i have come is a couple of times i have built
packages from unstable from source to install on potato(stable).
and have not encountered any problems(provided the package
compiled in the first place). the major benefit with debian
i see is things are very stable, and yes if you stick with
the stable distribution you get left behind when the latest
and greatest stuff comes out. i prefer to wait till it goes
through the testing phases and is declared stable before
starting to use it. The main reason i ditched win32 in
favor of linux/unix is because i was sick of software problems
win32 gave me. using testing/unstable gives me those same
problems even if they are less frequent or easier to solve,
i don't wan't problems at all, so i stick to stable.
>
> Is there a good way to avoid this?
don't use unstable packages:
xfree86 4.x
perl 5.6.x
mozilla 0.8.x
maybe it would be a good idea to somehow verify the packages
being installed are from debian, and if they are not, or if
they are not from the stable branch have apt or dpkg
spit out a big warning(something along the lines of when
you try to remove a vital system package and apt forces you
to type something like "Yes i know this is bad") so people
know what they are getting into .........
nate
debian user since debian 2.0
unix/linux user since 1994
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