Re: Single broken package blocks whole package management
"Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> writes:
> Raspbian _isn't_ Debian. Wolfram-engine is a third party (commercial) app -
> Wolfram Mathematica which the Raspberry Pi foundation licences with a
> special educational arrangement.
>
> You might be able to force a reinstall of wolfram-engine to produce
> something consistent to then remove but this is probably wasted
> effort.
Yes, and my question should be about dpkg & friends how to get out of
that state where a single corrupted package blocks everything.
> Rather than trying to update from 8 to 9, unless you have significant
> data invested, I would suggest simply downloading a copy of the latest
> release of Raspberry Pi OS based on Debian 11.
>
> Although I can guarantee that Debian should be upgradable between major
> releases, I can't be sure for other Debian derivatives.
I hoped for the chain of upgrades to work since that would be easier
than installing from scratch. Since that Raspberry Pi is head-less in
the room next-door. I need to pull the SD card, write the image onto
it, put the Raspi to some screen at my desk, find a keyboard etc. Not
much of a problem, but dist-upgrading through remote-login would be
less effort. Now, I'll do a installation from scratch.
> As ever, for Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
Yes, sure. AFAIK, nothing of that sort has been done to that Raspi,
at least, as long as I was the only root on it. I gave to my son a
year ago or so, but I think he didn't anything wrong to it.
> Debian installers which will install something closer to vanilla Debian
> are available - but don't include Wolfram's software. They're unofficial
> in that they're dependnet on non-free software to install. See
> https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/raspi/
I think I'll give it a try. On one of my old Raspis idling in my home
network or lying around and gathering dust. Especially the 64 bit
Debian should be interesting on my Raspberry Pi 3. So thank for that
pointer and suggestion.
urs
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