Aptitude hangs machine
I recently installed in a new Lenovo ThinkPad R61 Lenny using the Lenny
Beta2 installer. The installation went -- as far as I could see -- as
it should have.
Soon after installation I wanted to upgrade the installed packages.
First I updated /etc/apt/sources.list, including adding to it
debian-volatile so that I could install the clamav set of anti-virus
packages and get the periodic updates to tzdata. Then I ran (as root)
"aptitude update", followed by "aptitude upgrade". It downloaded some
33 package upgrades, including a new kernel (2.6.25-2-686 to replace
2.6.24) and tzdata.
The package setup only got as far as tzdata, when the machine hung. To
get the machine going again I had to turn it off using the on/off button
and do a cold boot without a proper shutdown.
After rebooting I ran aptitude again. It returned the message that
aptitude had been interrupted, and to get it running again I had to run
"dpkg --reconfigure -a". I tried to do so several times; each time it
tried to set up tzdata, only getting as far as to say what the current
time zone is before hanging up the machine.
I must say that upgrading tzdata has always caused me trouble; it was
never set up on the first attempt, but on all other of my machines
running "dpkg --reconfigure -a" was always successfull. On this laptop
however I have been unable to achieve success.
Because of this lack of success, I am unable to upgrade or install any
packages in this laptop. Is there a way to get out of this catch-22
situation, and consequently upgrade tzdata successfully, and upgrade and
install other packages?
Ken Heard
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