Thanks you all for your help! One of my friends helped me with a workaround, which is to use apt-get to install the packages I want. I'll wait for Colin's patch for dselect, and clean up the mess later. It seems I should mostly use apt-get from now on.
Thanks a lot, Robert Fu --- Ben Kal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 4 Jun 2003 Robert Fu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I'm a newbie to Debian Linux. Somehow I made a > mistake, and now whenever I > > run dselect, it'll try to uninstall about 200 KDE > packages. Thus I cannot > > install or remove any package without risk of > messing up the whole system. > > I ran into the same problem last year. > > > It seems to be a lot of work to manually re-select > the 200 KDE packages in > > dselect. I hope there is way to reset package > selection in dselect so that > > I can keep current installed packages and install > new packages. I did some > > search, and cannot find a solution. > > I could not either. > > > I saw somebody submitted Bug#35639: dpkg: No undo > for operations in > > dselect > > > (http://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/1999/debian-dpkg-199904/msg00009.html). > > It seems the bug was closed without any code > changes. > > Probably what we both dream of, a command to force > the package management > system to clean up a dependencies mess while > retaining most if not all of > the packages we need, is just too tall an order. > > > Does anyone know how to undo dselect after > mistakes are made in previous > > execution of dselect? > > Unfortunately, I do not. In the end, what I did was > back up all user data, > configuration files, downloaded programs and the > like, reinstalled Linux > from scratch, restored the backed up data, and never > used dselect again > as anything else than a tool to VIEW information on > packages. > > The commands I use the most for package management > are apt-get, apt-cache, > dpkg and dpkg-deb. The number of flags and options > you have to remember is > a bit annoying, but you have more control over what > happens than with > dselect. > > But I would be still be grateful if some wizard were > to reveal that there > IS a powerful 'packages clean up' command after all. > > Ben > > -- > > B.F.M. Kal > Anjelierstraat 1, 2014 TC Haarlem, Netherlands > tel +31 23 5324909, [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
