Re: Strange aptitude problem

[Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca>]

On Tue, May 01, 2007 at 03:55:25PM +0000, Andy Hawkins wrote:
> In article <[🔎] 20070501124351.GB7187@titan>,
>            Douglas Allan Tutty<dtutty@porchlight.ca> wrote:
> > Fire up aptitude interactively (no command line arguments) and see
> > what's up.
> 
> gently:~# aptitude
> Ouch!  Got SIGABRT, dying..
> Aborted

Hi Andy

Ouch is right.  In your origional message, you wondered if something was
broken at your end or the other.  I guess you now know that its
something at your end.  :((

Try 
	# dpkg --audit

and 
	# apt-get check

If these work, then at least you know that dpkg and apt are OK.

What happens with:

	# aptitude search '~i!~M' > aptitude_sel.txt

which asks aptitude to list all packages that are marked as manually
installed.  If it works, it's useful for recovering from errors such as
you are having.

Then, after backing up /etc/apt, try using apt-get to purge (in case the
problem is a configuration issue) then reinstall aptitude.  

If that goes OK, fire it up interactively and go down the list of
installed packages and set the auto/manual flag appropriatly.

Good luck.

Doug.