Re: Aptitude Wants to Delete/Remove Way Too Much

[Brian Nelson <pyro@debian.org>]

David Crane <davidcrane@mfire.com> writes:

> I did an update in aptitude last night, and it now wants to remove
> most of my system "because they are no longer used" or "due to 
> unsatisfied dependencies."   Since some of those packages are used 
> every day, I must have broken something.  I have not let aptitude 
> actually upgrade/uninstall anything yet.  I am looking for advise on 
> how to reset aptitude's memory of actions to some safe state.

That's not possible, as far as I know.  To fix a lot of broken
dependencies quickly, I tend to use '+' on whole groups (for example,
packages to be removed), rather than one package at a time.  Also,
searching for '~b' (broken packages) is helpful for deciphering what's
breaking what.

Some times I find that dselect is actually much more sane about fixing
broken dependencies than aptitude, so I'll often use that to return the
packaging system to a sane state before using aptitude again.

[...]
> Overnight, I let aptitude download all of the upgraded deb files.  I 
> estimate that 40% failed, because aptitude reported it took about 6 
> hours, but it would have taken about 10 for everything. 

Wow, 10 hours.  That must be a major upgrade.  Surely missing 40% of the
packages is the cause of the broken dependencies.

-- 
You win again, gravity!