Hi, debian!
My system: Debian Sarge, with little alteration other than a kernel
upgrade (to 2.6.8).
I currently have aptitude 0.2.15.9 compiled at Apr 7 2005 13:32:48. I
am having severe problems with it, and have become totally confused.
I start aptitude. This status message appears at the top right of the
screen:
#Broken: 12 Will free 16.7MB of disk space DL Size: 6215kB
. Using the aptitude command `find broken', it reports, amongst others,
vim as being broken, giving as further details:
* vim depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6)
* vim depends on libncurses5 (>= 5.4-5)
* vim depends on vim-runtime (= 1:7.0-122+1etch3)
However, vim works just fine (I'm using it to write this email).
#########################################################################
So, I try to update aptitude itself (this will surely help me with my
other problems ;-). To begin with, I start aptitude, and type ":" on
each of the 8 lines ("--- Security Updates", ....., "--- Tasks") in the
hope of clearing out dross.
I now find aptitude in the list (Successively <CR>ing "Upgradeable
Packages", "Admin", "Main", "Aptitude"). It gives a list of
dependencies, but doesn't say whether it is the current aptitude
(0.2.15.9) or the newest one (0.4.4-4) which so depends. Which is it?
Several of these are shaded red.
I type "u", and it tells me it's connecting to several hosts (presumably
to ask them if they're awake), and then that it's downloaded 0B in 21s
at 0B/s. Is this an error message, or an expected status message? What
is it trying to download here?
I now type "g", and the heavens open. In the top half of the screen I
get the message:
--/ Packages being removed because they are no longer used:
followed by a frighteningly large list (about two hundred) packages
shaded purple. If this sentence were to be reformulated with the second
verb active, e.g. "Packages being removed because X no longer uses
them", what would X be?. Then
--/ Packages being installed to satisfy dependencies
followed by 20 package names (such as cupsys-common, libgnutls13), then
--/ Packages being deleted due to unsatisfied dependencies
followed by an even frighteninglyier large list (~400 packages,
including many libraries). Lower down there is a list of 70 or 80
packages to be updated.
At this point, I type "q" to quit, for fear of utterly fubarring my
system, and in a state of high confusion.
#########################################################################
OK, my system works. Nothing I do on my Debian box from day to day
seems affected by any of the alleged dependency problems. To be honest,
I don't really believe aptitude's assertions of brokenness.
How did I get into this state? I tried several months ago to upgrade
python (which I was trying again today), and all this happened.
I don't seem to be able to clear this dross out of my aptitude status.
Where are the files which record all these things? (There's no mention
on the aptitude man page or the reference manual.) The "u" command
doesn't help here. It downloads 0 bytes in 21s, again, and doesn't
appear to do anything.
Would somebody please explain what's happened to my system, and how to
fix it. I would like to be able to _just_ install software, in
particular a >= 2.4 version of python.
Is there perhaps some command (apt-foo, perhaps??) which could rebuild
the package database on my system?
Is there perhaps a less flexible, easier to use package manager?
aptitude is about as complicated as mutt, but because I only use
aptitude at most a few times a year, I'm never going to get to grips
properly with it.
Thanks in advance for the help!
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
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