Re: apt-get and dselect problems
On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 11:53:57PM +0530, Ritesh Raj Sarraf wrote:
> On my server running Debian Woody, i've kept it up to date with all
> the patches.
> i also use dselect. recently i used dselect and it automatically has
> marked the package "webalizer" to be removed. I re-select it but it
> gives a hell out of dependency problem saying that webalizer depends
> on libgd2 or libgd2-noxpm. if i select libgd2 or libgd2-noxpm, then
> package "nut" gives the hell out of dependency problem that it needs
> libgd2.
"Gives a hell" and "gives the hell" are not helpful to either you or us.
Please quote the exact messages from dselect.
dselect is stricter than apt-get in some ways.
> Note: I had installed nut from some site but it was a deb package.
Oh. nut *is* in stable, you know ...
> The apt.conf file on my server is as follows:
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=stable
> Pin-Priority: 900
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=testing
> Pin-Priority: 750
>
> Package: *
> Pin: release a=unstable
> Pin-Priority: 600
This is a recipe for confusion. Pick *one* release and stick with it,
unless you're very confident in driving the package management system.
In other words, remove all that crud from /etc/apt/preferences and use
just a single release in /etc/apt/sources.list. Otherwise, all
dependency problems are your own.
I realize some documentation may disagree with me on this, but
experience trying to help people on this mailing list over the years has
convinced me that mixing releases is a very bad idea. The chief benefit
of stable is that you have a system that remains unchanging for a long
time and basically doesn't suffer from dependency problems; once you
start using newer packages without rebuilding them from source you've
lost that anyway, so you might as well not try to pretend that your
system is stable.
> Now to my Desktop Client, it too runs Debian Woody. Since it has only
> 64mb of RAM, I'm stuck to the default versions of KDE, GNOME shipped
> with woody. But I do need some packages from testing and unstable.
> Likely ones are, sylpheed and gnupg
> While doing apt-get -t testing install sylpheed I get a hell out of
> problem saying:
Don't do that. The bottom layer of GNOME has been rearranged and apt-get
isn't smart enough to figure all that out when told to install just one
application. It'd probably be too dangerous if it tried, anyway.
Either upgrade completely to testing (which will install the new GNOME
libraries, removing your problem), or recompile sylpheed from source on
your system so that it's built with the old GNOME libraries.
> Why does it want to remove gnome ? If it does how will I re-use Gnome.
> I can't go for Gnome-2.0. The Desktop machine (64mb RAM) will not be
> able to bear the Huge System Resource that these latest Destkop Window
> Managers eat up.
GNOME 1 isn't really supported any more in testing, so if I were you I'd
go for a simpler window manager. I use fluxbox; blackbox is similar.
Also, you should be able to use just the window manager from GNOME
without all the panel and desktop cruft. You can certainly use
individual GNOME applications like sylpheed without having to run the
rest of GNOME.
> Also doing apt-get -t testing install gnupg says:
>
> Packages to Install:
> libc6 libc6-dev and many more.
>
> I already have libc6 installed. Won't the new libc6 create problems
> for other softwares (like KDE 2) for my system to malfunction.
For the most part, no, it shouldn't. It would make upgrades almost
impossible if it did. However, the newer libc6 *has* been less well
tested than the one in stable, and the testing that has been done has
been on consistent all-testing or all-unstable systems, not strange
mixes with stable.
In general most packages in testing and unstable depend on a newer libc6
than that found in stable.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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