fixing broken apt
>>>>Danger you are entering a newb zone.<<<<
I would appreciate any help that people can offer me with this
problem. I have spent over 8 hours of dedicated time searching for
answers and trying various pieces of information that seemed like they
would offer a solution. I have read the man pages for apt, apt-config,
dpkg, etc. I have also read the manuals found at debian.org and looked
thru files on my own system, including logs to try to determine the
cause of the problem. The logs may yet hold clues but I'm not the most
well versed in that dept.
System: Debian Woody 2.4.18-bf2.4
Apt version: 0.5.4
I'm not sure exactly what happened. I had updated my sources.list and
created an apt.conf (since removed) and then ran "apt-get update".
While "apt-get update" was running I was kicked out of my XDMCP/VNC
session into the computer. When I logged back in and tried to access
any apt- prefaced command apt just hangs. It has to be terminated via
"ctrl-C" or I never get my command prompt back. If I run:
nonado:/# top | grep apt
5028 root 15 0 1044 1044 784 R 97.6 0.1 0:05 apt-get
5028 root 17 0 1044 1044 784 R 99.4 0.1 0:10 apt-get
At first I just removed the apt.conf file and then tried apt-get
update again. After that I tried:
# apt-get -f install
and
# dpkg --configure -a
Then I figured rebooting couldn't hurt. It didn't hurt but it didn't
change apt's attitude. Then I decided I would try to uninstall and
reinstall apt. Being that I'm relatively fresh linux user I didn't
want to try manually overwriting any program files. So I used dpkg and
all the alternatives I could figure out to try. I tried forcing
removal of the apt package but it errors on the dependancies. Same
thing if I try installing a manually downloaded copy of
apt_0.5.4_i386.deb.
Keep in mind this is a very short exerpt of what I have tried.
Basically everything I could read that made sense I tried to apply to
fixing the problem then the same with trying to just reinstall the
whole package. Hopefully it's just something simple that my feeble
Linux brain muscles are missing :)
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