Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, Daniel!
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 07:57:45PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 07:22:24PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de> was heard to say:
> > #Broken: 12 Will free 16.7MB of disk space DL Size: 6215kB
> > . Using the aptitude command `find broken', it reports, amongst others,
> > vim as being broken, giving as further details:
> > * vim depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6)
> > * vim depends on libncurses5 (>= 5.4-5)
> > * vim depends on vim-runtime (= 1:7.0-122+1etch3)
> > However, vim works just fine (I'm using it to write this email).
> First possible problem: aptitude uses "broken" as a shorthand for
> "broken *after I apply what you've told me to do*".
Ah! Thanks!
[ .... ]
> > #########################################################################
> > So, I try to update aptitude itself (this will surely help me with my
> > other problems ;-). To begin with, I start aptitude, and type ":" on
> > each of the 8 lines ("--- Security Updates", ....., "--- Tasks") in the
> > hope of clearing out dross.
> btw, to upgrade just aptitude it might be easier to run
> "aptitude install aptitude".
OK. But I'm a coward. Where in all the documentation would I find a
statement that doing this won't irreversibly hose my system, especially
when I'm scared that it's already in a fragile, possibly inconsistent
state? What, exactly, does "install" mean? These aren't rhetorical
questions. I've looked in the aptitude man page (sarge version from
2005). This is something I dislike about package managers - they demand
complete trust on an all-or-nothing basis. Or have I missed something?
What I would like is "test-download" facility that would prompt me for a
directory, and put the new version of the package there WITHOUT TOUCHING
MY CURRENT SETUP. I could then make sure it works properly before
committing myself to an irreversible and potentially catastrophic update.
> > I now find aptitude in the list (Successively <CR>ing "Upgradeable
> > Packages", "Admin", "Main", "Aptitude"). It gives a list of
> > dependencies, but doesn't say whether it is the current aptitude
> > (0.2.15.9) or the newest one (0.4.4-4) which so depends. Which is it?
> > Several of these are shaded red.
> The one shown by default is the default candidate version (the
> version number on the far right). If you pick a particular version,
> that one is shown.
OK.
> > I type "u", and it tells me it's connecting to several hosts
> > (presumably to ask them if they're awake), and then that it's
> > downloaded 0B in 21s at 0B/s. Is this an error message, or an
> > expected status message? What is it trying to download here?
> When you hit "u", aptitude checks for updates to the list of available
> package versions. It doesn't download anything if there aren't any
> changes.
OK.
[ .... ]
> Is there a reason you're still using sarge?
<rant mode>
Yes. Installing Debian is (was?) so painful that I really can't face the
drudgery again at the moment. I've only had about 2 years use out of
sarge so far. I started installing sarge in earnest the day after my old
PC died. After 20 days of work (when I didn't have a day job) I was
finally able to use it reasonably. I have kept a detailed log of the
process so that it won't be as bad second time round, but even so I'm not
looking forward to it.
I hit problem after problem after problem - nothing big or dramatic, but
each one took 2 to 4 hours to resolve, first tracking down the relevant
documentation, trying it out, sometimes with new kernel parameters,
sometimes even rebuilding the kernel. To be fair, not all the problems
were with Debian; it took a few days to determine that my ISP wouldn't
connect to my modem at 56kbaud, but was fine at 33kbaud. A typical
problem was that my X-Windows came up in 800 x 600 resolution - not nice
on a 17" CRT. It took an evening to search through the many
documentation sources, some of them not in easily searchable form, to
track down /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, make the appropriate adjustment and
test it.
When I (finally) got a DSL connection, it took me 7 days of evenings to
get my Ethernet card working. There doesn't seem to be a HOWTO for
network configuration. When something networky is not worky, typically
nothing happens, and one has to wade through /var/log/messages and
friends. On the rare occasions an error message does appear, it's
something like "No route to www.debian.org" rather than the more helpful
"Couldn't read file /etc/resolv.conf".
In the real world, nobody I know has got any sort of GNU/Linux installed
and working in a few days. Most have tried and given up after a weekend
or two, going back to a Microsoft system. Those few who have managed
have, like me, endured weeks of drudgery. Only on internet blogs do I
read "Wow!" reports about how it works perfectly an hour and a half after
inserting the installation DVD.
</rant mode>
[ .... ]
> > 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.
> I suspect you tried to install packages from multiple distributions --
> particularly problematic with the antique version of aptitude you have,
> because its dependency resolver can't span distributions correctly --
> and then saved a half-broken set of planned changes in your package
> states file.
That is surely the case. In the appropriate config file, I'll change
"stable" to "sarge" and see what happens. I'll report back when I've
tried it.
> What happens if you just run "aptitude install python2.4", out of
> curiosity?
Might it possibly leave programs written in Python non-working? Is
aptitude itself, or are any of the other package tools written in python?
> Daniel
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
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