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Re: Apt-get broken dependencies



Wednesday, 15 February 2006 05:06, Thomas Lenon wrote:
> I'm still stuck with apt-get refusing to remove gforge-db-postgresql
> and gforge-ldap-openldap because they depend on postgresql which was
> removed first.

That really should not be an issue. Have you tried to list them for 
removal all at the same time to make it clear that you would like to 
remove all of them, i.e.

apt-get remove gforge-db-postgresql gforge-ldap-openldap postgresql

> even apt-get -f remove doesn't fix the problem because it attempts to
> INSTALL postgresql (to solve the dependencies), and installing
> postgresql fails because /etc/init.d/postgresql is missing.

That's certainly an interesting behaviour. Since you wouldn't be 
particularly concerned about the integrity of postgresql should you be 
able to install it (because you'd most likely just remove it right 
away), you might want to try "touch /etc/init.d/postgresql" and then 
retry.

> At the end of the article cite above, it mentioned re-installing
> everything, as a last resort. If I go that route it will be with
> another distro, since Debian seems a little tired.

You really should not have to reinstall a Debian system, unless you've 
got yourself in a mess by mixing distributions or included other 
nonstandard repositories. Things do occasionally get interesting if you 
run Sid, but I've never run into anything that couldn't be fixed.

In my experience, aptitute is a much better tool than apt-get, 
particularly when there are conflicting dependencies or peculiarities. 
The resolver will usually offer several different solutions to a 
problem, and it seems a bit more willing to override the protests of 
dpkg when it knows it's right (e.g. dpkg protests on installation of a 
package because an installed package conflicts with it, but aptitude 
knows the conflicting package is about to be removed).

It does tend to work better if you've used it all along, so that it 
knows which packages have been manually installed. But it might be 
worth a try in your case. Just ignore the incomprehensible GUI mode and 
use it as a command-line drop-in replacement for apt-get.

If you find that this advice is all a bit general, it might help if you 
include information on what versions of the packages you have installed 
(and the versions apt-get is trying to install), which Debian 
distribution you are running, and which repositories you use.

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to debian-user.

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