ok, it seems that I overestimated the stability and relyability of the debian package management system somehow. I always thought that package list updates would overrule ancient dependencies, but obviously there are certain problems that could not be fixed automatically. I still don't have any idea how I "catched" those Ubuntu dependencies, or when. After deinstalling gdm and a whole bunch of other packages I was able to reinstall them without dependency problems. I would feel much better if I knew the reason for the problems. This computer is used very intensely for all sorts of development work, so from time to time I depend on installing more exotic software packages from outer sources. Now my theory is that somewhere out there there also were some non-standard X packages that happened to have a version number higher than what I had installed (for example, xbase-client version 6.4.2 instead of 4.3.0-xxx) and slipped in with some other update I intended to make, and which I did not recognize because I could not see from which source this package would come. Thinking about it, this might be a fairly high security risk, because I could offer my own debian package source location for my own project and sneak e.g. gnupg version 3.0.3 into my package list. Well, I don't know enough about the packaging system, but maybe this would be worth investigating further.
-- peter koellner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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