Re: Problem when upgrading to X.org

[Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl>]

Asa wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Yesterday I ran the first apt-get upgrade on my unstable machine
> in a few months.
>
> Predictatbly there were lots of packages to upgrade. There
> were also many that were held back. So I ran apt-get install
> for many of these held back packages, not paying that much
> attention to what they were - only watching out for other
> packages that would end up being removed (this was rather
> stupid in retrospect). 
>
> As I got to a set
> of X packages, the configuration asked me to choose between
> Xfree86 and x.org .  This was new to me, so I thought - why
> not make the switch and selected x.org.   
>
> During unpacking, x11-common gave the error:
>
> trying to overwrite '/etc/X11/Xsession.options' which is also
> in package xfree86-common
>
> apt then stoped. it also will not allow me to install anything else
> until x11-common is installed. On reset, X will not start.
> Furthermore startx seems to be missing.
>
> The version of x11-common that gives this error is
> 6.9.0.dfsg.1-4_all
>
> Can anyone shed any light on this or do I just have to wait
> for -5  ? Does anyone know when that's going to be released?

To me it looks rather like you would need one of the older packages of
XOrg, since those managed to make the transition from XFree86 to XOrg
gracefully. I think you "missed" the natural time to make the switch and
now the newer XOrg packages are no longer doing everything which is
necessary to replace XFree86 smoothly. Nevertheless, I would expect that
you can simply force x11-common to overwrite the file and then continue
with the upgrade normally. This can be done by the command

# dpkg --force-all -i /var/cache/apt/archives/x11-common_6.9.0.dfsg.1-4_all.deb

followed by

# apt-get install -f

Regards,
           Florian