I have been trying for three or four days to get my x server to run. I can't get dselect or apt to do the intelligent thing when it comes to re-installing anything.
If I fix something (by brute-force: download via ftp and install), something else breaks. apt and dselect are hopelessly trapped in loops or something about what depends on what, what I should have installed and so on. For instance: at the moment, I am trying to install man-db, since I don't have any man pages (don't ask). I do: apt-get install man-db I get: ... You might want to run apt-get install -f... Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies: man-db: Depends: groff rstart: Depends: netstd but it is not going to be installed rstartd: Depends: netstd but it is not going to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try apt-get -f install with no packages (or specify a solution) I thought apt was supposed to *sort out* dependencies. So I do: apt-get install -f and I get: blah blah blah The following... will be installed: netstd ... 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 10 packages not fully installed or removed. ...Do you want to continue? I say Yes. I get: Unpacking netstd... dpkg: error processing... netstd_3.07-7slink... trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/finger', which is also in package finger dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing: ...netstd_3.07-7slink... E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) So then, not seeing what else I can do, I do: apt-get install finger and I get: ... rstart: Depends: netstd but it is not going to be installed rstartd:... and then it advises me to run apt-get -f install. So I'm stuck in a loop. Is there some master package I can ask for that will reinstall Debian 2.2? What else can I do? This sucks! TIA Guyren G Howe
