Hi Colin Watson, > OK, you're right that it's not the default state, sorry. That's not the > whole story though: > > $ grep-status -nsPackage -FStatus 'purge ok not-installed' | wc -l > 10312 > > The first word in the Status: line is the "want" status (as the dpkg > sources call it), and describes the desired state of the package: so > "purge" there doesn't mean it's currently purged, but that you've > selected it to be purged.
Agreed. This must have all happened after I tried to import my package selections from another computer. The apt-get dselect-upgrade tried to install extra packages as well that I had never requested (probably due to recommends). So I ended up doing it all using apt-get like I'm used to. > A desired state of 'unknown' is how dselect tells the difference between > new packages and packages it's seen before. Thus a single run through > dselect's [S]elect screen causes everything on the system to be marked > either as want_install or want_purge. Ah. That explains it. This is not good as there should be a way to distinguish between packages that have been purged and packages that have never been installed. > I use dselect on all the systems I run, so I tend to forget that the > want_unknown state exists. Understood. BTW the computer does have a faulty hard disk that I'm just about to remove. However it is not the boot hard disk where the package database resides. Thanks for the explanation. Regards, Adam -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
