On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 07:29:08PM -0500, Mark Allums wrote:
John Hasler wrote:
Carl writes:
about it. But until then, I can't downgrade from Sid back to Lenny on
that machine. It's hopeless. So that machine will not be put into
production.)
Its not hopeless. Use the aptitude curses interface and fix things up
the way you want. I can't imagine it taking, worst case, more than a
couple of hours; best case, less than a minute to set up.
Is there a tool that lets one see (and possibly edit) the dependency
graph? (apt database)? I am only middlin' experienced with Debian, and
I am not sure how to go about repairing things, short of a fresh
install. I realize that editing the dependencies of individual packages
is a bit like editing the registry is on W*nd*ws, playing with fire! A
GUI tool with a visualization of the graph would be excellent.
I don't use GNOME so can't see how things are on my box. However, with
aptitude, lets say you selected the gnome meta-package. All the
dependancies would be installed but marked as Automatically installed.
If you remove one that then removes the gnome meta-package, then all
those Automatically-insalled packages (which are only installed to
fulfill the gnome dependancies) would be marked for removal.
The tool you're looking for is the aptitude curses interface. It shows
you exactly what is going on. You can, for example, mark all the
dependancies of the gnome meta-package that you want to remain, as
manually (remove the "A" flag) installed so that removing the
meta-package leaves those packages alone.
Doug.