On Thu, Dec 07, 2006 at 03:30:47PM -0500, Sarunas Burdulis wrote:
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> hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > After failing to reconstitute my etch system (details abundantly
> > available on this mailing list a few months ago), I wiped its partition
> > and tried to install etch form scratch using installer release candidate
> > one, only to find that lilo crashed when it was trying to make the
> > system bootable (installation report has been submitted).
> >
> > So my next attempt was to copy the still-running sarge system I have on
> > another partition into my etch partition, and to try to upgrade the copy
> > to etch by changing /etc/apt/sources to read 'etch' where the old one
> > reads 'sarge', starting aptitude, and upgrading.
> >
> > My first attempt was to try to upgrade aptitude first. No luck.
> > Trying to upgrading aptitude immediately led to hundreds of packages
> > that would be deleted. My guess is they were caught in the libc
> > transition.
> >
> > My second attampt was to try 'U' so as to do a general upgrade. Again,
> > huge numbers of deleted packages, and a huge number of packages to be
> > installed, too. Went ahead with it anyway, after rescuing aptitude
> > itself -- it had decided it was appropriate to delete aptitude without
> > installing it again. But just typing '+' on aptitude was enough to
> > restore it without problem, so I don't know why it decided it was to be
> > removed in the first place.
> >
> > After about three to four hours of downloading, it started the upgrades.
> > Several problems immediately. It couldn't upgrade fontconfig or pysol,
> > and refused to try further. pysol needed python2.4, don't know why it
> > decided to do that first. fontconfig is now unusable, which causes
> > troubles elsewhere.
> >
> > After various attempts to solve the problems, I am left with a huge
> > number of packages to be deleted/upgraded/installed, and X that won't
> > work, and a list of 18 packages that have problems.
> >
> > Should I try again tomorrow in the hope that package dependencies will
> > sort themselves out? Or should I just give up and try another way of
> > installing tomorrow? Can't think of one now, but one will probably come
> > to me it I think hard enough.
> >
> > -- hendrik
> >
> Sound like what I have seen "as usual" while doing dist upgrades (Debian
> and Ubuntu). Several apt-get {update|upgrade|dist-upgrade|-f install}
> cycles often are needed. Some packages almost always get "stuck", i.e.
> cannot be upgraded or prevent other packages to be upgraded. For those I
> do apt-get remove and then install.
The hard part is to identify the key packages that are blocking all the
rest.