APT problems (416 error and "uncaught exception")

["John Halton" <johnhalton@gmail.com>]

I'm having problems with updating/installing with aptitude, on a mixed
Etch/Sid system. When running "aptitude update", the output ends with
the following:

Err http://ftp.debian.org sid/main Packages
416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable

Then when I try to install/dist-upgrade, I get the following output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
Building tag database... Done
Uncaught exception:
../../../src/generic/problemresolver/problemresolver.h:2216:
generic_problem_resolver<PackageUniverse>::generic_problem_resolver(int,
int, int, int, unsigned int, int, const PackageUniverse&) [with
PackageUniverse = aptitude_universe]: Assertion
"bd.broken_under(solution::root_node(initial_broken, universe,
weights))" failed.

If I try to use apt-get instead of aptitude, I get a pile of
dependency errors apparently involving almost every package on the
system. Sample output follows (issued command was "apt-get install
galternatives"):

<snip>
 xutils: Depends: libfontenc1 but it is not going to be installed
         Depends: libfs6 but it is not going to be installed
         Depends: xfonts-utils but it is not going to be installed
         Depends: xutils-dev but it is not going to be installed
         PreDepends: x11-common (>= 1:7.0.0) but it is not going to
be installed
 yelp: Depends: libxul0d but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or
specify a solution).

However, when I comment out the Sid repo, the problem goes away. This
seems to suggest it's a Sid problem rather than a bug. Is anyone else
suffering this? Any idea what the problem is/when it may be resolved?

Thanks,

John