Re: I seem to have messed up aptitude. Can't get back original behavior.
On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 04:33:53PM -0500, "A. F. Cano" <afc@shibaya.lonestar.org> was heard to say:
> I mistyped a command. I intended to type "dpkg -S gdb" to find what package
> contains the debugger in question and instead I typed "aptitude -S gdb"
> >From then on, aptitude starts but claims I only have 44 packages installed,
> and a few more in the other categories. Is this a matter of just the display
> or is it that now aptitude only knows about a very small subset of packages?
Running "aptitude -S" won't do this (and I tested it just to be
sure). Breaking the package cache in some other way could.
> # apt-cache search gdb
> courier-authlib-userdb - userdb support for the Courier authentication library
> libgdbm3 - GNU dbm database routines (runtime version)
> python-dbg - Debug Build of the Python Interpreter (version 2.5)
> ruby1.8 - Interpreter of object-oriented scripting language Ruby 1.8
> vim-dbg - Vi IMproved - enhanced vi editor (debugging symbols)
>
> This too failed to find gdb. Where is it? Do I have a totally damaged
> package database now?
That confirms for sure that the problem is at a level below aptitude:
nothing aptitude-specific modifies the apt or dpkg package states. gdb
should be in the gdb package:
daniel@emurlahn:~$ apt-cache show gdb
Package: gdb
Priority: optional
Section: devel
Installed-Size: 5960
Maintainer: Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 6.8-3
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7-1), libexpat1 (>= 1.95.8), libncurses5 (>= 5.6+20071006-3), libreadline5 (>= 5.2)
Suggests: gdb-doc
Filename: pool/main/g/gdb/gdb_6.8-3_i386.deb
Size: 2771050
MD5sum: 40866d448f22d8de8b5c657115df2a36
SHA1: 7158929355bb8a07c24154a19e59d6941a139137
SHA256: ecdcfc1616abd20341cb3bc7aeace65ada1fd01a6eaf545f98ccd338caf71361
Description: The GNU Debugger
GDB is a source-level debugger, capable of breaking programs at
any specific line, displaying variable values, and determining
where errors occurred. Currently, it works for C, C++, Fortran,
Modula 2 and Java programs. A must-have for any serious
programmer.
Tag: devel::{debugger,lang:c,lang:c++,lang:fortran,lang:java}, interface::text-mode, role::program, scope::utility, suite::gnu, uitoolkit::ncurses, works-with::software:running
It could just be that the downloaded copy of the apt lists got deleted
somehow. Does running "aptitude update" or "apt-get update" help at all?
Daniel
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