On Saturday 02 October 2021 12:27:26 pm Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > On Sat, Oct 02, 2021 at 11:57:51AM -0400, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote: > > In recent messaging here I touched on how I'd determined that my > > workstation was way behind being current. Apparently I needed to go > > 8->9->10->11. I tried the first of those steps, and things did not go > > well in a number of ways... > > > > For some reason, the software decided to remove virtualbox. Which is a > > real problem, because it's inside a virtual machine that I do all of my > > mail, so I couldn't get at my mail for a while. In Synaptic Package > > Manager if I try to install it I get the following error message: > > > > "Package virtualbox has no available version, but exists in the database. > > This typically means that the package was mentioned in a dependency and > > never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not available with the contents > > of sources.list" > > > > I got temporarily past this by installing 8 on this laptop I'm currently > > typimg on. Some things are decidedly less convenient. > > > > Firefox is majorly different, apparently having gone from 68.9.0 --> > > 78.14.0esr. It no longer uses the font that I'm telling it to, and for > > some odd reason won't play any youtube videos any more. Instead I see a > > message on the screen that says "if video doesn't start momentarily restart > > your device". Huh? > > > > Konqueror is also broken, I get "Could not start proess Unable to create > > io-slave: klauncher said: Error loading 'kio_file'"... > > > > Trying to open a file with Okular gets me a similar message. > > > > I don't see any way to back out of these changes, or any obvious place to > > look for where the problems are. Suggestions welcomed. > > > > > > Hi Roy, > > On the broken machine: can you give us the output of /etc/debian_version
9.13 > What's the kernel version it's currently running - uname -a should give you > that. 3.16.0-11-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.84--1 (2020-06-9) x86_64 GNU/Linux > Firefox _will_ be majorly different: it's one of the packages where we > have to continue to track upstream's -esr version because we can't backport > security fixes. Okay, but I don't get the apparent inability/refusal to play any videos? It's not just youtube... > What amount of output does an apt-get update give you? Nine lines starting with "Get:", "Ign:", "Hit:" etc. "The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/https could not be found." "Is the package apt-transport-https installed?" "Failed to fetch https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/dists/stretch/InRelease"; and: "Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead." > If you can give us more info, we can perhaps help you better. Hope this helps. I am really not sure what is going on here... -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin
