Yesterday, 3 July (GMT+10) I attempted to resolve dependency problems for the dist-upgrade that I'd left running overnight. My system is now dead. I have installed a new installation on a different filesystem, and am starting from scratch.
I do these upgrades fairly often. Sometimes I'll let it go a month, or even two. In general I have few real problems. Fairly often however I am harassed by messages from "install-info". I have developed a standard operating procedure in these cases: edit the offending file (eg *.prerm or *postinst) and run "dpkg --configure". I'm not happy of course, but this or some other similar procedure *usually* (TM) takes care of these things. I have posted to these lists in the past my feeling about this install-info. Why should installation of documentation be the most common pediment to upgrades? Rarely do I have any other problem. I have begun to think it's time to reinstall. I am sure there is major cruft I am not taking care of. After over perhaps two years of incremental upgrades, one or two major partition shifts, it's time. Well, it happened. I don't even know what. I am embarrassed that I cannot even relate to the list what messages I received. After a number of vexing complaints from apt-get/dpkg, which I overcame in the way I have described, as well as by "force-overwrite", etc., the system came to total loss. No keyboard input into login prompts. Messages about init. I think that sysvinit might have been hosed. I had to reinstall login a few weeks ago, to solve a somewhat similar problem. THis is not the libpam issue, as I had gotten through that one in an hour. I am reinstalling, but if I can figure this one out, I will save myself a month of work. This was a well loaded system with lots of self-installed packages. I am starting from potato, now have upgraded to woody. Does any of this mean anything to anyone? Alan Davis
