Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi again,
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 08:47:35PM -0500, Mumia W.. wrote:
> On 06/19/2008 02:22 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> >Hi, debian!
> >My system: Debian Sarge, with little alteration other than a kernel
> >upgrade (to 2.6.8).
> >I currently have aptitude 0.2.15.9 compiled at Apr 7 2005 13:32:48. I
> >am having severe problems with it, and have become totally confused.
> >I start aptitude. This status message appears at the top right of the
> >screen:
> > #Broken: 12 Will free 16.7MB of disk space DL Size: 6215kB
> >[...]
> >Would somebody please explain what's happened to my system, and how to
> >fix it. I would like to be able to _just_ install software, in
> >particular a >= 2.4 version of python.
> >Is there perhaps some command (apt-foo, perhaps??) which could rebuild
> >the package database on my system?
> >Is there perhaps a less flexible, easier to use package manager?
> >aptitude is about as complicated as mutt, but because I only use
> >aptitude at most a few times a year, I'm never going to get to grips
> >properly with it.
> >Thanks in advance for the help!
> To know what is going on with your system, we would need to see your
> /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/preferences files.
#/etc/apt/sources.list:
#########################################################################
deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib
deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib
#########################################################################
I haven't got an /etc/apt/preferences. However, I can see one problem.
I've got "stable" where I really want to have "sarge". "stable" points
at the current Debian release, which changes every now and then. This
seems a source of my problems.
> The output of this command would also help:
> aptitude -sV upgrade
#########################################################################
[ a few status messages from reading the archive ]
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
cjk-latex [4.5.1-4 -> 4.7.0+cvs20061019-2]
freetype1-tools [1.4pre.20030402-1.1 -> 1.4pre.20050518-0.4]
hlatex [0.991-6 -> 1.0.1-2.1] hlatex-fonts-base [0.991-2.1 -> 1.0-3.1]
libttf2 [1.4pre.20030402-1.1 -> 1.4pre.20050518-0.4]
The following packages have been kept back:
a2ps [1:4.13b-4.3 -> 1:4.13b.dfsg.1-1]
....
bsdmainutils [6.0.17 -> 6.1.6] bsdutils [1:2.12p-4 -> 1:2.12r-19etch1]
.... [~500 packages "kept back"]
zlib1g-dev [1:1.2.2-4 -> 1:1.2.3-13]
The following packages will be upgraded:
apsfilter [7.2.6-1 -> 7.2.6-1.1] base-files [3.1.2 -> 4]
.... [ ~70 packages "will be upgraded]
xml-core [0.09 -> 0.09-0.1]
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
latex-cjk-all [4.7.0+cvs20061019-2] libcompress-zlib-perl [1.42-2]
libeel2-2.14 [2.14.3-5] libft-perl [1.2-16] libhtml-format-perl [2.04-1]
lsb-base [3.1-23.2etch1] wbritish [6-2] x-ttcidfont-conf [25.1]
99 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 5 to remove and 762 not upgraded.
Need to get 152MB of archives. After unpacking 57.5MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Would download/install/remove packages.
#########################################################################
> I suspect that your attempt to upgrade python broke your system. If you
> are not an expert with Debian, it is best to stick with a single
> distribution (e.g. "stable") rather than to mix distributions (e.g.
> "oldstable"+"stable").
I was expecting that in using a package manager, it would simply do the
Right Thing, without me having to worry. Again, I think the problem for
me is that the meaning of "stable" has changed from "sarge" to "etch".
Presumably this was a deliberate choice of the Debian team, on the
assumption that most people would be upgrading as early as possible
anyhow. Is there a symbolic link (or something similar) in the Debian
archive, something like "sarge" -> "oldstable", that I could use here in
place of "stable"?
> One way to solve this problem would be to modify your
> /etc/apt/sources.list to contain only Sarge ("oldstable") sources and
> update aptitude. Then, using aptitude's interactive interface, remove
> those "obsolete and locally created packages" that seem to depend upon
> non-Sarge resources. Anything from "obsolete and locally created
> packages" that seems to be breaking the system should be removed. After
> that, confirm that aptitude is happy by doing another "aptitude -sV
> upgrade." Aptitude should not want to upgrade anything.
I will try this. Thanks!
> You need python (>= 2.4), and that version exists in Etch--which is why
> you wanted to mix distributions, but mixing distributions is a great way
> to break a Debian system, so you need backports. See if backports.org
> has a suitable version of python for you. If not, consider upgrading to
> Etch. As a Sarge user, you are not getting security updates, so you
> should probably want to upgrade soon anyway.
Installing Debian is very, very painful, and upgrading it is probably not
much better. I downloaded an etch CD image about a year ago, in fact, on
17th May 2007, and started installing it. On 26th May, I got distracted
by something else, and never got back to etch. To install sarge and get
it working acceptably took me 20 days when I didn't have a day job, and
it took me another 7 days of evenings to get my ethernet card working
when I (finally!) got a DSL link. I've kept a blow-by-blow log of
everything I did, so it won't be as bad next time round. But I'm still
not looking forward to it.
> BTW, by mixing distributions, you would have problems regardless of
> which package manager you used.
Hmm. I don't really feel that it was me that did the mixing. :-)
However, I take the point. I'll try the suggestion you gave me up above
(putting "oldstable" into sources.list), and then report on what
happened.
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
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