Re: Borked update

[Katipo <katipo@weavers-web.org>]

Martin J. Hillyer wrote:

> After a small fling with Gnome, and trying to remove it, I'm having
> trouble getting my system updated.  I've been flailing around a fair
> bit, so a reinstall may be my only option at this point.  But perhaps
> someone here could show me a way to avoid that.  I was running
> unstable, and got this problem; downgrading to testing didn't make the
> problem go away.
>
> The problem seems to be with nautilus-media, debconf, or perl, or all
> three - I'm not sure.  Here's what I see:
>
> $ dpkg -C
> The following packages are in a mess due to serious problems during
> installation.  They must be reinstalled for them (and any packages
> that depend on them) to function properly:
> nautilus-media       Multimedia goodies for Nautilus
>
> The following packages are only half configured, probably due to problems
> configuring them the first time.  The configuration should be retried using
> dpkg --configure <package> or the configure menu option in dselect:
> debconf              Debian configuration management system
>
>
>
> # dpkg --configure -a
> Setting up debconf (1.4.17) ...
> Unquoted string "functions" may clash with future reserved word at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Noninteractive.pm line 1.
> syntax error at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Noninteractive.pm line 1, near "}{"
> Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 11.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 11.
> Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/AutoSelect.pm line 6.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/AutoSelect.pm line 6.
> Compilation failed in require at /usr/share/debconf/frontend line 6.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/debconf/frontend line 6.
> dpkg: error processing debconf (--configure):
> subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 9
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> debconf
>
>
> I get the same error messages about 'Unquoted string "functions" may
> clash...'  when trying to upgrade or reinstall nautilus-media.  And
> these errors seem to cause no package to be upgraded.
>
> Can someone point me in the right direction, or is my system so hosed
> at this point that a reinstall is in order (it would be a first)?
>
>  
Hello Martin,

Looks as though we are in the same boat, so lets get something going here.
I'm in the process of stripping down Gnome 2.4, and it is a minefield of 
interdependencies.
I know that nautilus-media and the nautilus package are dependent, so if 
you install the package nautilus that may help with nautilus-media.
I've purged both nautilus and nautilus-media so far, If I need that type 
of file manager, gmc will do it, and there are better multimedia 
packages than nautilus-media.

The only other thing that I have been able to glean so far, as I've just 
started, is the gnome dependency on libgnome2-perl.

For the rest, the impression is the problem is with debconf, from the 
downgrade.
Have you tried a reinstall of debconf testing?
Regards,

David.