[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: aptitude --mind-your-own-business option?

Ken Irving wrote:


I've periodically tried using aptitude, but always get scared off
when it seems to "run away".   I'm sure it knows what's best for my
machine ;-), but is it possible to override this behavior?

 $ sudo aptitude install wmmoonclock -s
 ...
 The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
groff imagemagick libconfig-inifiles-perl perlmagick python2.3 python2.3-iconvcodec rcs texi2html weblint The following NEW packages will be installed: wmmoonclock 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 9 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 
 Need to get 0B/158kB of archives. After unpacking 21.2MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] 
<SNIP>


It's odd that I can use apt-get without any hint of these problems.

Per another thread, I tried to use the "unmarkauto" command to fix things,
but apprently the need to clean things up is still there
$ sudo aptitude unmarkauto '~M!~R~i' ... 
 The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
 ...

I'll probably just go back to using apt-get, and probably everything
will be fine until the next time I decide to try aptitude.  Is there a
compelling reason to bother?
I have found that trying to get aptitude to work well on a system that has been managed with apt-get has never worked for me. My box has been running Debian since Bo, IIRC, and aptitude has tried to rearrange the whole box, so I deleted it. However... the box has accumulated a lot of cruft, which even deb-orphan can not easily rid me of, so... Instead of just doing a dist-upgrade from Sarge to Etch when Etch goes stable I have set aside a seperate set of partitions and installed Etch from scratch with debootstrap and a chroot. On these partitions I have ONLY used aptitude, and it seems to do a good job. Its ability to keep track of what is no longer needed should keep down the level of cruft accumulation and allow me to just aptitude 'dist-upgrade' for another dozen years, or more. 

--
Marc Shapiro

No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
What?! Look, somebody's got to have some damn perspective around here.
Boom. Sooner or later ... boom!

- Susan Ivanova: B5 - Grail
Reply to: