Package: aptitude
Version: 0.2.15.9-2
Severity: important

My aptitude has entered a catastrophic state: it wants to delete an
infinite number of system critical packages.  I naturally wish to clear
this state and start from fresh.  [Incidentally, PLEASE don't tell me to
upgrade my aptitude first.  I can't, at the moment. ;-]

The online help doesn't seem to indicate a "clear pending updates" key
sequence.  There doesn't seem to be anything in any of the menus which
does this.  I've tried searching the fine manual (which at ~180kB is too
big to read through all the way) - I searched for "clear", "undo" and
one or two other things, without luck.

The normal expedient here, of course, would be to quit the program and
start again.  However, aptitude "helpfully" preserves this catastrophe in
some state file for the next time you run it.  ;-(  The fine manual
doesn't identify this file - otherwise, I could simply delete it.  THIS
IS A BUG!!!!  The man page doesn't have a FILES section identifying the
file.  THIS IS ALSO A BUG!!!!  C-c'ing out of the program, as suggested
by the FM, doesn't help.

Incidentally2, I tried checking the online manual (presumably up to
date) at http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/,
but this didn't help me either.

So, assuming there is _some_ way I can clear this state, I should be
able to find this in the manual.  Right at the moment my aptitude is
unusable.

I'd much appreciate a tip to get me going again.

Thanks in advance for fixing the FM!

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  apt [libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3 0.5.28.6     Advanced front-end for dpkg
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-22 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libgcc1                     1:3.4.3-13   GCC support library
ii  libncurses5                 5.4-4        Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libsigc++-1.2-5c102         1.2.5-4      type-safe Signal Framework for C++
ii  libstdc++5                  1:3.3.5-13   The GNU Standard C++ Library v3

-- no debconf information



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