On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 8:07 PM, John Hasler
<jhasler@debian.org> wrote:
B. Alexander wrote:
> I've got an issue with a sid box that I have been maintaining for a
> while. This is my workstation, and I have noticed a growing number of
> broken packages, unmet dependencies and conflicts. I have been using
> safe-upgrade for months now, hoping that it would work itself out over
> time. However, this hasn't happened.
No, of course not. Sid is constantly undergoing the sort of changes
that take place when you upgrade from one release to the next and which
full-upgrade is designed to handle (and which safe-upgrade blocks):
transitions, removal of obsolete packages, major version changes that
require new library versions that may be incompatible with other
packages, etc. Sid is often also in an inconsistent state when, for
example, a package is uploaded in advance of its dependencies. By
repeatedly running safe-upgrade you have forced these things to pile
up.
> So what can I do to fix the problems without losing functionality?
"aptitude full-upgrade" and then patiently sort through the resulting
mess. It might be simplest to write down all the proposed removals, let
it do its thing, and then install the removed packages.
Yes. I need to block out some time and do just this.
> No problem. Most of my Debian installs at home run sid, with the rest
> running testing...Except my firewall, which runs stable for the first
> 6 months or so (until critical packages start getting long in the
> tooth), then I upgrade it to testing and run until the next stable
> release.
I'm having trouble imagining what packages appropriate to a firewall
could get long in the tooth.
ssh, ssl, iptables, snort, etc. I don't have an extensively large package list on my firewall, especially compared to a workstation, but since it is on the sharp end of my network, I try to keep it as up to date as is feasable.
--b