Re: How can I refresh Etch completely?

[Mark Grieveson <dg135@torfree.net>]

> Greetings;

> I upgraded from Sarge according to the instructions but I have
> had all sorts of problems with it.

> It seems to me that either something got corrupted during
> the upgrade, there is something left over from Sarge that
> shouldn't be, or there is the wrong version of a library
> somewhere.

> Is this a clue? When I try to use aptitude it wants to remove
> 150+ "unused" packages, including Gnome. Doesn't feel right
> to me so I don't use it.

Did you use aptitude to upgrade your system (ie, "aptitude
dist-upgrade")?  If not, and you used apt, or synaptic, that will
explain why aptitude is giving erratic results.  Best to continue with
what you had been using.

> Any way, any ideas short of the old Windows stand by,
> "Format the hard drive and reinstall"?

> Many TIA,
> Dennis

You could try

dpkg-reconfigure -a  

This'll take a while, and it will
ask you some questions thoughout.  If you want the machine
to automatically reconfigure itself, without asking you any questions,
you could try 

dpkg-reconfigure --frontend=noninteractive -a

I don't know if this will help or not, but I doubt it would make things
worse.

Mark