Re: Broken Zope, Python, xbase-clients, etc

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw@iprimus.com.au>]

Russ Cook wrote:
> Please help.  I tried to upgrade my system, after a long period
> of stable operation.  During the upgrade attempt, use apt-get
> dselect-upgrade, Zope failed to upgrade, due to pre remove script
> failure.  Zope is currently installed at 2.3.3-1 level, trying to
> upgrade to 2.6.1-10.  It is trying to run python-base, which apparently
> is no longer available, and not on my system.  I did reinstall
> python1.5_1.5.2-27_i386.deb and python1.5-dev_1.5.2-27_i386.deb, from
> ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/python1.5.  Additional problems are
> that startx no longer exists on my system, and I can't run X.  I don't
> know if this is directly related, but dselect and apt-get fail during
> all attempts to upgrade due to zope and python script errors.
>
> I am not a sophisticated user, and apparently have done myself damage.
> Can anyone offer some steps for me to try to restore my system?  I will
> be happy to provide a copy of 'dpkg -l' or any logs to anyone willing
> to help.

First, make sure you have lines for "testing" in sources.list.
Then: apt-get update

apt-cache search zope|sort
for a list of zope things.

apt-get install -t testing zope

if it stalls on any dependencies, then apt-get them too.
When that is complete, you can apt-get the X system.