Re: dselect, init and systemd-sysv

[Adam Wilson]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 11:26:54 +0100
Aldo Maggi  wrote:

> Yesterday while updating my system via dselect (I'm using testing)
> I've received the warning that "init and systemd-sysv" were going to
> be uninstalled and I had to approve or deny that action.

You have to be prepared to face things like this if you're using
testing. If you want everything to work peachy-perfect, use stable.

I had the same problem a few days ago, back when I was still using
testing. A whole host of issues and buggy packages led me to learn from
my folly and switch to stable, of which I am a proud user once more.

If you must continue using testing for some reason, be prepared to put
up with problems such as these; they are manifold (occasionally).

> I've thought that as in previous cases (to be frank not recently but 
> many years ago) there was a mistake, since looking at the packages
> which were going to be installed it didn't seem that a replacement
> was present, therefore I've stopped the updating.
> This morning I've tried again but got the same warning.
> So I've used apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, in this case no
> warning appears and systemd-sysv appears among the pkgs to be
> upgraded.

This should already be a sign that apt-get and aptitude are vastly
superior to dselect. dselect hasn't been the preferred dpkg frontend
since woody.

> Is dselect still working safely or should I give up and change
> package mgr?

Use apt-get. Seriously. The latest documentation for dselect is from
woody, and 14 years old (2002):
https://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/ch-main.en.html

Re: dselect, init and systemd-sysv

[koanhead]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2016 12:00:02 +0100, Aldo Maggi wrote:

> Yesterday while updating my system via dselect (I'm using testing) I've
> received the warning that "init and systemd-sysv" were going to be
> uninstalled and I had to approve or deny that action.
> I've thought that as in previous cases (to be frank not recently but
> many years ago) there was a mistake, since looking at the packages which
> were going to be installed it didn't seem that a replacement was
> present, therefore I've stopped the updating.
> This morning I've tried again but got the same warning.
> So I've used apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, in this case no warning
> appears and systemd-sysv appears among the pkgs to be upgraded.
> 
> Is dselect still working safely or should I give up and change package
> mgr?
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Aldo

Without seeing the specific message output by dselect it isn't possible 
to say for sure- but I would guess that your testing system is trying to 
do a dist-upgrade, and in the process switching your init to the new 
default, systemd. If you don't want this to happen then it might be 
prevented by installing the systemd-shim package IIRC. 
If you're confused by the behavior of dselect I recommend using the `apt` 
tool instead, or one of `aptitude` or `apt-get`.

Again, without the specific output messages you are seeing it's not 
possible to properly diagnose the situation- so everything I'm saying 
here could be entirely wrong!

Re: dselect in wheezy; Old timers question

[John W. Foster]

On Sat, 2013-12-14 at 16:09 -0600, Selim T. Erdogan wrote: 
> John W. Foster, 14.12.2013:
> > I'm managing a couple of remote VPS servers with no GUI access except
> > putty. I have been using dselect to assist with this process & up to
> > yesterday it worked well as it has for years. I did a apt-get
> > distupgrade and all went as expected and the system is running fine.
> > However after I did the upgrade from old stable to wheezy, I decided
> > that I needed to get an upgraded openjdk-7-jre installed for the game
> > systems I'm running. When I did that the dselect decided I needed a lot
> > of extra stuff to go along and I hit 'ctrl x' to abandon those changes.
> > I reloaded the selections available and went into get ONLY the jre that
> > I needed using apt-get install  & the entire load of X related stuff
> > popped up. Now I have tried to clear the caches of dselect and apt but
> > they all seem stuck. Running apt-get clean & autoclean do not clear the
> > dselect picked dependencies.
> > 
> > Any ideas on how to get the dependencies & suggested selections cleared
> > out.
> 
> Hello, fellow dselect old-timer. :)  You should have hit X, not Ctrl-X, 
> Anyway, here's what 'man dselect' says:
> 
>If  you  mistakenly  establish some settings and wish to revert all the
>selections to what is currently installed on the system, press the  'C'
>key.  This is somewhat similar to using the unhold command on all pack‐
>ages, but provides a more obvious panic button in cases where the user
>pressed enter by accident.
> 
> (The previous paragraph was about using X to back out changes.  The 
> screen in which you should have done that is the context of the "pressed 
> enter by accident".)
> 
> I never tried this.  Let us know how it works.
> 
> 

worked exactly as stated. Sorry I didn't even think of checking the man
pages. I've been usin dselect for decades & just 'thought' I knew what I
was doing LOL  just go's to show..
Thanks
John
-- 



  
  


John Foster





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Re: dselect in wheezy; Old timers question

[Selim T. Erdogan]

John W. Foster, 14.12.2013:
> I'm managing a couple of remote VPS servers with no GUI access except
> putty. I have been using dselect to assist with this process & up to
> yesterday it worked well as it has for years. I did a apt-get
> distupgrade and all went as expected and the system is running fine.
> However after I did the upgrade from old stable to wheezy, I decided
> that I needed to get an upgraded openjdk-7-jre installed for the game
> systems I'm running. When I did that the dselect decided I needed a lot
> of extra stuff to go along and I hit 'ctrl x' to abandon those changes.
> I reloaded the selections available and went into get ONLY the jre that
> I needed using apt-get install  & the entire load of X related stuff
> popped up. Now I have tried to clear the caches of dselect and apt but
> they all seem stuck. Running apt-get clean & autoclean do not clear the
> dselect picked dependencies.
> 
> Any ideas on how to get the dependencies & suggested selections cleared
> out.

Hello, fellow dselect old-timer. :)  You should have hit X, not Ctrl-X, 
Anyway, here's what 'man dselect' says:

   If  you  mistakenly  establish some settings and wish to revert all the
   selections to what is currently installed on the system, press the  'C'
   key.  This is somewhat similar to using the unhold command on all pack‐
   ages, but provides a more obvious panic button in cases where the user
   pressed enter by accident.

(The previous paragraph was about using X to back out changes.  The 
screen in which you should have done that is the context of the "pressed 
enter by accident".)

I never tried this.  Let us know how it works.


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Re: dselect in wheezy; Old timers question

[Nate Bargmann]

Perhaps using the Aptitude UI (Ncurses TUI) will let you unselect the
currently selected packages.

- Nate

-- 

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds.  The pessimist fears this is true."

Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://www.n0nb.us


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Re: no .info info on info (was Re: dselect fun)

[wes davidson]

I was speaking about the integrated aptitude help page, which is
using exactly same interface as info.


ah, now i understand.

at least, i think i do.  i'm assuming by "exactly the same interface"
you mean they both take input from and provide output to a terminal?

since that describes practically every tool i use, you had me confused
for a second.  (perhaps i still am?)


Since it uses the same interfaces, my mind merged those informations
without asking me! It should ask... :P


you must have clicked the "do not show this message again" box.


This interface is accessible when you run aptitude in ncurse mode,
then, I think you'll find your way.


i will try to remember your optimism when the time comes.


The common problem with man, is when things come to non CLI
interface: for ncurses and X GUI, man does not sounds really
efficient.


ah, i see.  aptitude is primarily an interactive tool, so its primary
documentation can be internal to the application, and accessed while
you are interacting with it.  interesting point.  i get it now.


Man was never something hard for me. I think it is because I
discovered less and immediately fall in love with that tool (I
previously only known the more tool from DOS, it explains my love I
think).


they do say that less provides more functionality. ;)


unfortunately, in debian, afaik until one installs
texinfo-doc-nonfree

Oh, I'll check it out. Having doc for info could potentially help me
a lot!


cool.  three more things.  well, four:

 1. there exists a --vi-keys command line option for info that
 advertises itself as being more like less and vi.  i'm not a vi user,
 so i don't use it. but when you are using this option, `H' provides a
 listing of the appropriate key bindings.

 2. to run info run within emacs: `ESC x info'.

 3. i haven't tried pinfo, mentioned by another poster. (thanks,
 brian.) the package description mentions that it has lynx-like key
 bindings.

 4. as long as i'm spamming the list, there's a description of a dozen
 basic info commands below.

cheers, 
wes



===
basic info commands
===

there are other commands, many of them useful, but the six pairs below
are good to understand.


1 nodes=pages: an ontological conundrum
===

technological breakthroughs of the previous century now permit the
publication of documents whose pages are not of uniform length.
therefore, we need new words.  (wait, what?)

in an info document, a node is a page that covers a given topic.
(because documents are trees, and a tree is an arrangement of things
called nodes.)

let's move on.


2 forwards and backwards


`]' and `[' page through a document's nodes like the pages of a
book---one node after the other, in the sequence they'd show up if
each node were a page in a book. `]' looks forward and `[' looks back.

since sometimes all the text in a node doesn't fit into one screenful,
there are also SPACE and BACKSPACE (or perhaps DEL instead).  SPACE
moves forward.  the other one goes the other way.

if an ascii-art flip book were set in info format, then holding down
`]' would be "play", and releasing it would be "pause".

but if it were a pornographic ascii-art flip book and the interesting
parts didn't show up on the first screenful of a node, then in order
to pollute your innocence you'd have to SPACE through them.  if you
accidentally spaced past the best frame, you might use BACKSPACE to go
back to it.


3 documents are trees
=

the information in a piece of documentation is structured by its
generality (some topics are subtopics of others).  by convention, up
is general, down is specific.

also, when a given topic requires the discussion of several distinct
subtopics of equivalent generality, they are arranged in a
particular sequence.  (Q: why?  A: excellent question.)

so, count them: *two* dimensions.  whoa.


3.1 down and up: dimension one
==

anyways, `m' (menu) moves down into more specific topics, and `u' (up)
moves back up into more general ones.

to go down into a subtopic with `m', you'll need to specify which one.
start typing its name, and hit TAB when you get sick of typing.  tab
completion works.  (if you change your mind about the whole menu
thing, do control-g to cancel.  depending on how much there is to
cancel, you might need to hit it twice.)


3.2 next and previous: the next dimension
=

also, when you're looking at a subtopic (`balloons', let's say) of
some topic (maybe `loud things'), then `n' (next) moves on to the next
loud thing (perhaps `fire engines').  `p' (previous) will go back to
the previous loud thing (probably `barking dogs', in this case).

nb: if your current subtopic (let's stick with `balloons') has
subtopics of its own (`inflation', `static electricity', etc) and you
hit `n', you will not see them.  why?  because `n' at `balloons' takes
yo

Re: no .info info on info (was Re: dselect fun)

[Morel Bérenger]

Le Dim 27 janvier 2013 17:02, wes davidson a écrit :
> hi morel.
>
> you wrote:
>> Note: I did not read the info page of aptitude.
>>
>
> i think perhaps there does not exist such a document for aptitude. if i am
> wrong about this, i would be grateful to learn where it can be obtained.

Hum... maybe not info by info command in fact (I have no way to try it for
now, and I'll have forgot when I'll be able, this evening ;) ).
I was speaking about the integrated aptitude help page, which is using
exactly same interface as info.
Since it uses the same interfaces, my mind merged those informations
without asking me! It should ask... :P

This interface is accessible when you run aptitude in ncurse mode, then, I
think you'll find your way.

> when i first read a unix man page twenty years ago, i had a rather similar
> reaction. it took me an embarrassingly long time to screw in the lightbulb
> and do 'man man'.  (perhaps i am a closet homophobe.)

Man was never something hard for me. I think it is because I discovered
less and immediately fall in love with that tool (I previously only known
the more tool from DOS, it explains my love I think).

> i am not sure which document you refer to, here.  info has a manpage,
> which is indeed not terribly helpful to the novice.  it is, after all, a
> manpage, and manpages are not intended to be helpful to novices.

The common problem with man, is when things come to non CLI interface: for
ncurses and X GUI, man does not sounds really efficient.

> but there exists a much more extensive document in .info format (namely
> info.info), geared toward the novice user, including a tutorial that i
> personally found very helpful.
Did not found it. Where is it?
I usually try to simply run the software alone to explore it's menus
and/or try common shortcuts like F1, CTRL+H, ? and alike.

> unfortunately, in debian, afaik until one installs texinfo-doc-nonfree
Oh, I'll check it out. Having doc for info could potentially help me a lot!

> ps: please do not mistake my unhealthy interest in the info system for
> some kind of pushy advocacy.  i merely seek (perhaps unsuccessfully) to
> clarify its accessibility.
No problem, and thanks for the tips.


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Re: no .info info on info (was Re: dselect fun)

[Brian]

On Sun 27 Jan 2013 at 11:02:22 -0500, wes davidson wrote:

> hi morel.
> 
> you wrote:
> 
> >I do not like info at all: this is a software which pretends to help
> >you, but you have to learn how it works before being able to use it.
> 
> when i first read a unix man page twenty years ago, i had a rather
> similar reaction. it took me an embarrassingly long time to screw in
> the lightbulb and do 'man man'.  (perhaps i am a closet homophobe.)

Reading info pages with pinfo has never been a chore for me.


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no .info info on info (was Re: dselect fun)

[wes davidson]

hi morel.

you wrote:

Note: I did not read the info page of aptitude.


i think perhaps there does not exist such a document for aptitude. if
i am wrong about this, i would be grateful to learn where it can be
obtained.

i am aware of various manpages and the html documentation for
aptitude, which i do have, and which are fine as far as they go.  but
if (say) the html doc were converted to .info format, i would find it
more convenient to browse.


I do not like info at all: this is a software which pretends to help
you, but you have to learn how it works before being able to use it.


when i first read a unix man page twenty years ago, i had a rather
similar reaction. it took me an embarrassingly long time to screw in
the lightbulb and do 'man man'.  (perhaps i am a closet homophobe.)

likewise, it was initially somewhat frustrating to learn how to use
info.  iirc, most of the frustration was due to the absence of
/usr/share/info/info.info (or some analogous file) on the system i
used at the time.  'info info' just brought up a manpage in an
obnoxiously unfamiliar reader.

in other words, on that system, there was no .info info on info!


And, it's info manual is just useless.


i am not sure which document you refer to, here.  info has a manpage,
which is indeed not terribly helpful to the novice.  it is, after all,
a manpage, and manpages are not intended to be helpful to novices.

but there exists a much more extensive document in .info format
(namely info.info), geared toward the novice user, including a
tutorial that i personally found very helpful.

on a system with this latter document installed, 'info info' renders
it in the info reader.

unfortunately, in debian, afaik until one installs texinfo-doc-nonfree
from the non-free repositories, the files for this self-documentation
don't exist on the system, and 'info info' will merely render info's
manpage unto the unsuspecting newb.

cheers,
wes davidson

ps: please do not mistake my unhealthy interest in the info system for
some kind of pushy advocacy.  i merely seek (perhaps unsuccessfully)
to clarify its accessibility.

-
 `But the plans were on display...'
 `On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find
 them.'
 `That's the display department.'
 `With a torch.'
 `Ah, well the lights had probably gone.'
 `So had the stairs.'
 `But look you found the notice didn't you?'
 `Yes,' said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a
 locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the
 door saying BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD.'

On 2013-01-27 in 'dselect fun', berenger.mo...@neutralite.org wrote:

Note: I did not read the info page of aptitude. I do not like info
at all: this is a software which pretends to help you, but you have
to learn how it works before being able to use it. And, it's info
manual is just useless.



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Re: dselect fun

[berenger . morel]

Le 24.01.2013 22:01, Richard Owlett a écrit :

Chris Bannister wrote:

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 09:54:17AM +, Darac Marjal wrote:
chime in with a reminder that dselect is considered discouraged 
these
days. It's spiritual successor (a TUI interface to apt) is now 
aptitude.


That depends on who you ask. For newbies, I certainly wouldn't 
recommend
dselect, but if they wanted to use it I certainly wouldn't 
discourage
them from doing so. In fact, if they can get their head around 
dselect,

then anything else that is thrown at them will probably seem like a
piece of cake.



As to the overall Linux market there are at least two distinct
classes of "newbies".

There is the class who is targeted by the Canonical (cf Microsoft)
mentality - Big Brother knows best.
There is class who wants the best from his system.
"BEST" is not a simple one dimensional parameter.

When I was in school a strong emphasis was placed on "first 
principles".

I think Debian could benefit from that outlook.
I.E. Use the intuitive/user friendly/simple/simplistic interface(s)
when appropriate.
   But know hat goes on "under the hood".

I'll follow the later route. I started my transition from Windows to
Linux over two years ago. I could have had a system up in a day. But 
I

don't see how it would have been significantly better/ than
(insert your least favorite OS implementation here).

I'll continue to pursue the "back to basics" route.
I do not wish to discourage pointing newbies to most modern tools.
BUT please point them to the fundamentals.


I could not agree more. It sounds like I am following the same road 
that you, starting more or less at the same time: 2 years ago, or maybe 
3, I fully switched to Debian, using windows only for few games 
(previously, I had debian installed while a year, but was never using 
it, lacks of games...), from time to time (but learning and programming 
are now my favorite games, so I spend more time on Debian).
Now, despite the fact I'm still a newbie, I am trying to go on gentoo's 
road, and never learn about dselect. Just by taking a quick look, I can 
say that it have interesting options aptitude lacks.
It is still a graphical software (ok, a semi-graphical one, like 
aptitude) which is important for me, because apt-get does not allow you 
to learn as easily why your packages are installed and their description 
in the same time, but in 2 seconds, I noticed it gave some options 
aptitude never gave me: choosing to install from cdrom, cdrom-set, nfs, 
 sounds very powerful!

I think I'll try it deeper now.

But I do not think there are many kinds of newbies. A newbie is someone 
which is trying to learn, and, in my opinion, it is not an insult at all 
(some people on MMO games think it is). It is a "compliment" (not sure 
about word) since I think people who want to learn are very valuable 
guys. Regularly more than some self-proclaimed experts (well... lamers).
But maybe I am keeping too much memories from the time where I was 
learning to crack softwares: in that time, every tutorial was starting 
with some terminology: lamer, newbie, cracker, hacker, black/white hat 
were explained before the first technical lessons. That knowledge of 
terminology should be, in my opinion, teach in regular classes too. It 
would avoid or restrain medias to say that music counterfeiters (damn, 
that word is ugly) are hackers.


There are simply newbies and users. Users do not mind to learn or not, 
they want to use, and only use. They will use anti-viruses to remove 
their responsibilities of stupid acts, they will ask to professional to 
maintain their car, they'll ask to insurances to change their window's 
glasses, etc. When newbies will do the task themselves, and learn from 
their failures.
Of course, we are all users in a domain or another, because being a 
newbie costs time, and money. But when you become a tinkerer, you'll 
just take that time and money back :)


About aptitude... the ncurse version is correct. Slow, but correct 
(when you have a break somewhere, every move take ages! I guess it 
checks broken dependencies every time you move.). Or at least, was, 
before multi-arch.
Since multi-arch, everything is 2 times slower: upgrades (double data 
to download), browsing (double lines to browse), fixing broken 
dependencies... and debtags uses still lacks features (currently, AFAIK, 
we can only browse tags by the tree, not specify we refuse some tags. 
Imagine I refuse to install all KDE stuff - which is true - I can not 
say to aptitude to avoid showing packages with KDE debtag).
I do not speak about the GTK version. It simply have nothing related to 
ncurse version, event shortcuts differs (a real problem, since I think 
ncurse aptitude users like it for them).
So, if dselect can be faster, I think I might use it now, instead of 
aptitude.


Note: I did not read the info page of aptitude. I do not like info at 
all: this is a software which pretends to help you, but you have to

Re: dselect fun

[Richard Owlett]

Chris Bannister wrote:

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 09:54:17AM +, Darac Marjal wrote:

chime in with a reminder that dselect is considered discouraged these
days. It's spiritual successor (a TUI interface to apt) is now aptitude.


That depends on who you ask. For newbies, I certainly wouldn't recommend
dselect, but if they wanted to use it I certainly wouldn't discourage
them from doing so. In fact, if they can get their head around dselect,
then anything else that is thrown at them will probably seem like a
piece of cake.



As to the overall Linux market there are at least two 
distinct classes of "newbies".


There is the class who is targeted by the Canonical (cf 
Microsoft) mentality - Big Brother knows best.

There is class who wants the best from his system.
"BEST" is not a simple one dimensional parameter.

When I was in school a strong emphasis was placed on "first 
principles".

I think Debian could benefit from that outlook.
I.E. Use the intuitive/user friendly/simple/simplistic 
interface(s) when appropriate.

   But know hat goes on "under the hood".

I'll follow the later route. I started my transition from 
Windows to Linux over two years ago. I could have had a 
system up in a day. But I don't see how it would have been 
significantly better/ than (insert your least favorite 
OS implementation here).


I'll continue to pursue the "back to basics" route.
I do not wish to discourage pointing newbies to most modern 
tools. BUT please point them to the fundamentals.





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Re: dselect fun

[Chris Bannister]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 09:54:17AM +, Darac Marjal wrote:
> chime in with a reminder that dselect is considered discouraged these
> days. It's spiritual successor (a TUI interface to apt) is now aptitude.

That depends on who you ask. For newbies, I certainly wouldn't recommend
dselect, but if they wanted to use it I certainly wouldn't discourage
them from doing so. In fact, if they can get their head around dselect,
then anything else that is thrown at them will probably seem like a
piece of cake.

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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Re: dselect fun

[Darac Marjal]

On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 04:49:04PM -0800, Arne de Boer wrote:
> sudo bash
> 
> apt-get install dpkg dselect
> 
> dpkg --get-selections > /root/dpkglistOK
> 
> dselect
> mess around ;-)
> 
> when finished:
> 
> dpkg --set-selections < /root/dpkglistOK

I'm not entirely sure if this message was supposed to be in reply to
something or if you missed out some narrative, but I just thought I'd
chime in with a reminder that dselect is considered discouraged these
days. It's spiritual successor (a TUI interface to apt) is now aptitude.



signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: Re: dselect and resolving

[Scott and Charity Taylor]

Dont know what that is , but I do know I cant get on your site


  Scott t.
Parr












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Re: dselect stopped after trying to update menu.lst

[[KS]]

[KS] wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I tried to search the list's messages from the last couple of weeks to
> see if others might have experienced this problem. Didn't see anything,
> so I'm posting here. Point me to other similar posts if there were any.
> 
> I was upgrading my system using dselect and after purging
> linux-image-2.6.14-2-686, it was probably doing something related to
> splash image (I didn't have splash image on the machine before this
> upgrade). It didn't find any splash image and said "skipping...". It
> updated menu.lst and now is sitting there doing nothing :( There were
> two initramfs related bugs marked as critical #361270 and #358397. I
> wonder if one of those were a reason of this behaviour!
> 
> I will leave it running till the morning so as to wait for
> responses/suggestions on how to proceed from here.
> 
> Thanks,
> /ks
> 
> Fetched 105MB in 6m20s (275kB/s)
> Reading package fields... Done
> Reading package status... Done
> Retrieving bug reports... Done
> grave bugs of python-cairo (-> 2.4, 2.3) 
>  #325379 - python-cairo: undefined symbol: cairo_ps_surface_create
> critical bugs of initramfs-tools (-> 0.68b) 
>  #361270 - update-initrams doesn't call lilo, when grub is around
> grave bugs of busybox ( -> 1:1.1.3-2) 
>  #163501 - busybox: cp -a doesn't copy symlinks
> grave bugs of initramfs-tools (-> 0.68b) 
>  #358397 - initramfs-tools: Fails to install
> grave bugs of python-gnome2 (-> 2.12.4-3) 
>  #354614 - foomatic-gui: segfaults when invoked
> Summary:
>  python-cairo(1 bug), busybox(1 bug), initramfs-tools(2 bugs),
> python-gnome2(1 bug)
> Are you sure you want to install/upgrade the above packages? [Y/n/?/...]
> Reading changelogs... Done
> Extracting templates from packages: 100%
> Preconfiguring packages ...
> (Reading database ... 146544 files and directories currently installed.)
> Removing aptitude ...
> Purging configuration files for aptitude ...
> Removing libgnome-menu0 ...
> Purging configuration files for libgnome-menu0 ...
> Removing libreadline4 ...
> Purging configuration files for libreadline4 ...
> (Reading database ... 146521 files and directories currently installed.)
> Removing libtasn1-2-bin ...
> (Reading database ... 146507 files and directories currently installed.)
> Removing linux-image-2.6.14-2-686 ...
> Purging configuration files for linux-image-2.6.14-2-686 ...
> Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
> Testing for an existing GRUB menu.list file ... found: /boot/grub/menu.lst
> Searching for splash image ... none found, skipping ...
> Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.16-1-686
> Found kernel: /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1-686
> Updating /boot/grub/menu.lst ... done
> 
> 
> 

It seems that linux-image-2.6.14-2-686 was causing some problems.

dpkg: error processing linux-image-2.6.14-2-686 (--purge):
 subprocess post-removal script killed by signal (Interrupt)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-image-2.6.14-2-686
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


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Re: dselect: unable to open/create access method lockfile

[Brian C]

Hi,

I describe a partial solution and the next problem below.

David Kirchner wrote:

On 12/16/05, Brian C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

dselect: unable to open/create access method lockfile

but I still get the same error. Can anyone explain how to allow dselect
to create the lockfile it wants to?


I'm not sure where it would put the lockfile, but you may be able to
find out using 'strace'. strace will show you the system calls the
process is attempting, including what files it's trying to read.
'strace -o foo dselect' and then 'grep access foo' or 'grep open foo'
may give you the answer.


trying to apt-get something gave me a more useful error and I knew I 
needed the following files and directories:


mkdir -p /var/lib/dpkg
touch /var/lib/dpkg/status
mkdir -p /var/lib/dpkg/updates

This allows dselect to run. However, having lost my 'status' file is now 
a bigger problem because it created a new status file that believes I 
have NOTHING installed and so it wants to re-install every required 
Debian package. I'd rather not find out what happens if I let it do that.


How can I create a status file that accurately reflects the packages 
already installed on my system?


Brian


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Re: dselect: unable to open/create access method lockfile

[David Kirchner]

On 12/16/05, Brian C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> dselect: unable to open/create access method lockfile
>
> but I still get the same error. Can anyone explain how to allow dselect
> to create the lockfile it wants to?

I'm not sure where it would put the lockfile, but you may be able to
find out using 'strace'. strace will show you the system calls the
process is attempting, including what files it's trying to read.
'strace -o foo dselect' and then 'grep access foo' or 'grep open foo'
may give you the answer.

Re: dselect install of deb package -- Where is it?

[Bill Marcum]

On Sun, Jul 17, 2005 at 03:39:03AM -0500, Benjamin Sher wrote:
> Dear friends:
> 
> [Using Debian 3.1 Etch]
> 
> I am bit confused. I read up on dselect and dpkg online and decided to
> install a program called kradio with dselect. I downloaded the .deb
> available on the author's site. In fact, I downloaded an earlier and a
> later version:
> 
> kradio_0.3.0-snapshot-2004-02-28_i386.deb
> kradio_1.0beta1_kde34_i386.deb
> 
> I decided to play it safe by installing the earlier one. dselect downloaded 
> over 200 packages, mostly updated to make this possible. No problems. No 
> error messages, everything fine in Synaptic. 
> 
> I now proceeded to install the deb. First, the earlier one, then the
> later one (please remember that I am using the latest files from
> Etch).
> 
> But apparently, kradio never installed. I am perplexed by what the data below 
> mean:
> 
> localhost:/home/sher/DOWNLOADS# dselect install kradio_1.0beta1_kde34_i386.deb
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Do you want to erase any previously downloaded .deb files? [Y/n] y
> Press enter to continue.
> 
Use dpkg to install a .deb file.


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Re: dselect and a Recent Experience

[Martin McCormick]

Oliver Elphick writes:
>Does your /etc/apt/sources.list reference woody or stable?
>
>They used to be the same, but now there is a new stable, sarge.  So if
>you reference stable, a lot of your packages are now regarded as
>obsolete.  You should either reference woody explicitly or do a complete
>upgrade (recommended!) using the instructions in the release notes at
>http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/index.en.html

Excellent question that hadn't even occurred to me!  Here's the
important lines in sources.list

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main  
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main

That's probably the problem right there.  I also had

 deb http://www.carezia.eng.br/debian woody main

This was for a modified version of snort which worked well on
my system at the office, but never quite worked right on the home
system so I took that source out of the sources.list at home about 6
or 7 months ago.  Both systems swarmed on me in the same way so I
think you hit the nail on the head.  The system at home is probably
now safely upgraded since I whacked the whole OS and started from
scratch with the newest Debian netinstall CD.

I should make sure the work system gets upgraded soon and that
will probably make dselect safe to use again.

Many thanks.


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Re: dselect and a Recent Experience

[Marty]

Martin McCormick wrote:

In the spirit of helpfulness on this list, I want to repay
some of the assistance I have gotten from others, here.  This message
is a warning, not a gripe.  I think Linux software is astoundingly
robust.  Like anything, there are gotchas.  I am not sure exactly what
happened, but I last week trashed my system at home while doing a
rather innocent upgrade based upon what dselect computed needed to be
done while installing a single package.


I don't think your problem is with dselect but with your apt configuration
(assuming you have dselect set up to use the apt method).  It probably
started to upgrade automatically as a result of the recent release of sarge.
This will happen automatically if your /etc/apt/sources.list points to
"stable" rather than to "woody."

  I wasn't paying attention

closely enough because things usually work perfectly and what happened
was that a large number of packages got removed and the system ended
up not even being bootable.


The most likely cause is upgrading your kernel without properly
configuring it, or the resulting LILO or GRUB reinstall. Another
possible cause of boot failure is upgrade to udev.  On my
systems I need a console device in /dev before the udev devices are
created, the lack of which causes a boot hang.


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Re: dselect and a Recent Experience

[Oliver Elphick]

On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 12:06 -0500, Martin McCormick wrote:
>   Today, here at work, I was going to install bittorrent on ta
> Debian system and I used dselect to list the packages in order to find
> bittorrent.  It found it and I started to install from there except I
> saw that dselect was also going to whack about the same number of
> packages here that it did when I was on my system at home.  Both are
> very stable woody-installed systems. 

Does your /etc/apt/sources.list reference woody or stable?

They used to be the same, but now there is a new stable, sarge.  So if
you reference stable, a lot of your packages are now regarded as
obsolete.  You should either reference woody explicitly or do a complete
upgrade (recommended!) using the instructions in the release notes at
http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/index.en.html

Oliver Elphick


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Re: dselect and a Recent Experience

[Clive Menzies]

On (22/06/05 12:06), Martin McCormick wrote:
>   In the spirit of helpfulness on this list, I want to repay
> some of the assistance I have gotten from others, here.  This message
> is a warning, not a gripe.  I think Linux software is astoundingly
> robust.  Like anything, there are gotchas.  I am not sure exactly what
> happened, but I last week trashed my system at home while doing a
> rather innocent upgrade based upon what dselect computed needed to be
> done while installing a single package.  I wasn't paying attention
> closely enough because things usually work perfectly and what happened
> was that a large number of packages got removed and the system ended
> up not even being bootable.  Fortunately, I do /home backups on a
> daily basis and I was even able to use a rescue disk to tar /home so I
> didn't loose data.  The new version of my system now has ext3 file
> systems for everything and grub as the boot loader. the only real loss
> was time.
> 
>   Today, here at work, I was going to install bittorrent on ta
> Debian system and I used dselect to list the packages in order to find
> bittorrent.  It found it and I started to install from there except I
> saw that dselect was also going to whack about the same number of
> packages here that it did when I was on my system at home.  Both are
> very stable woody-installed systems.  I was actually awake at the
> switch this time so I aborted the tragedy before it happened.  I used
> apt-get install bittorrent since I knew I had it in the package lists
> and it appears to have worked fine and corrected the dependencies
> needed to install bittorrent.
> 
>   dselect has, for the most part worked very well so I think
> there is a possible bug somewhere to cause it to get confused as to
> what it is supposed to delete, but everyone needs to pay closer than
> usual attention to what dselect is doing if or when you use it.
Hi Martin

I used dselect when first using Debian, for well over a year and was
reluctant to change.  However, about a year ago, I encountered similar
problems and thought I'd try aptitude.   There are strong views on this
list: dselect v aptitude v apt-get  the former two are front-ends to
the latter.  No doubt, someone will write why they don't like aptitude.

Having used aptitude both at the command line and through the menu, I've
found its behaviour very predictable, once you understand it.  The
important thing is to use it exclusively, because it remembers what was
installed through it and will remove dependancies when you remove a
package.

Where people encounter problems is when they use more than one package
management method.  That's when aptitude suddenly tries to remove half
your system for no apparent reason.

FWIW the upgrade manual for woody -> sarge stipulates that using
aptitude is the preferred method.

Regards

Clive

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Re: dselect Issue

[Maurits van Rees]

Hi Stephen,

On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 08:18:08PM +1000, Stephen Grant Brown wrote:
> When running dselect it now wants to download about 80mB, remove programs I
> want and install new programs when I go to install..
> How do I tell it to leave the system as it is?

Don't run it? ;-)

Seriously, dselect probably has a good reason to do this. A program
that you requested to install probably has some dependencies that
conflict with some programs that are already installed. It should have
presented you with a screen stating the conflict and asking you how to
solve it. To get that screen again you can go to Select in the main
menu. Then tell it to install those programs again that it has doomed
for removal. Dselect should now complain and present you with the
screen that mentions the problems. That screen should have all the
info you need to at least be able to understand why dselect is
harassing you and hopefully be able to fix it.

If it doesn't work, please give some more info, like the packages
involved and their version numbers (currently installed version and to
be installed version).

HTH,

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Re: dselect problems

[Michael Spang]

Giorgio Raccanelli wrote:
Hello,
I'm in trouble using dselect. I've just installed Debian Woody 3.0r3 
i386 and I'm trying to add some package to my system. Using dselect I 
make the selection and then I hit Return. I'm warned about the 
dependencies. I press space and I see the dependency list. From what I 
understood from the dselect manual, if I'm happy with the selection made 
by the system I can simply hit Return and I should be fine. But, in my 
case, this is not happening. When I press Return I'm told about the 
dependencies again. Therefore, after seeing the dependency list again I 
press Return for accepting. And again, I'm warned of dependencies and so 
on!
So far, I've been able to install only mc, but to do it I had to press Q 
instead of Return (which mean I forced the system to accept my 
selection): this shouldn't be the solution.
Do you have any hint?
Thank you

Giorgio Raccanelli

dselect will not allow you to continue if you ask it to do something 
impossible; there's likely a conflict which it prompts you to resolve.

Michael Spang
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Re: dselect not respecting holds ?

[Maurits van Rees]

On Mon, Nov 08, 2004 at 01:23:54PM -0800, James Kirk wrote:
> > The correct way to keep a package in its current
> > uninstalled form is
> > *not* to put in on hold. 
> 
> Can you point to the documentation that says this is
> the correct way to keep a package in its current
> state?

I'll express myself more clearly:

- If you have installed a package and you want to keep it in its
current state: mark it `on hold'.

- If you have a package that you don't want to have installed, no
matter what its current state is: mark it `remove' or `purge'.


Now let's see what we can find in the docs.

`man dselect' says:

Current and requested selections:
 *   marked for installation or upgrade;
 -   marked for removal, configuration files remain;
 =   on hold: package will not be processed at all;
 _   marked for purge, also remove configuration;
 n   package is new and has yet to be marked.

I guess that means that putting a not yet installed, unwanted package
on hold could work just fine. Personally I would still mark it for
purge, as that signals more clearly that you don't want this
package. To me, marking a package on hold signals that you consider it
special and want to know it if some other package wishes to install it
or upgrade it. Dselect may feel the same way.

But no matter how you mark a package A, there could still be a package
B that depends on it and overrules your marking, presenting you with a
conflict resolution screen. You said that there were only
recommendations and suggestions in this case, so the behaviour you
describe indeed seems strange.

> > The first time dselect
> > presents you with a
> > recommended or suggested package that you don't
> > want, simply decline
> > to install it. Next time dselect should not ask that
> > question again.
> 
> Nope.  Have you tried this ?  It certainly doesn't
> work on my system.  That is the reason I thought I
> would give the "hold" state a try.

Yes, I have tried this and it works on my system.


Again, can you mail the result of the following command?

dpkg -l tetex-bin texi2html gramofile mctools-lite cddb dselect

And while you are at it, also give the result of:

uname -a

And include the contents of the file /etc/apt/apt.conf for good
measure.

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 - Winston Churchill


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Re: dselect not respecting holds ?

[James Kirk]

--- Maurits van Rees <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 10:05:44PM -0800, James Kirk
> wrote:
> > The dselect's online help states, when describing
> key
> > usage, the H or = will hold a package in its
> present
> > state, and when describing the meaning of the
> symbols
> > used in the 4 state columns that = denotes the
> package
> > is on hold, and will not be processed at all.
> > 
> > I don't want texi2html or mctools-lite, and
> therefore
> > don't need cddb, either.  So, I marked these 3 as
> yet
> > uninstalled packages hold (=) thinking that
> dselect,
> > wanting normally to install these recommendations
> > would instead hold them in their uninstalled
> state.
> 
> 
> The correct way to keep a package in its current
> uninstalled form is
> *not* to put in on hold. 

Can you point to the documentation that says this is
the correct way to keep a package in its current
state?

> The first time dselect
> presents you with a
> recommended or suggested package that you don't
> want, simply decline
> to install it. Next time dselect should not ask that
> question again.

Nope.  Have you tried this ?  It certainly doesn't
work on my system.  That is the reason I thought I
would give the "hold" state a try.

Thanks.

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Re: dselect not respecting holds ?

[Maurits van Rees]

On Sun, Nov 07, 2004 at 10:05:44PM -0800, James Kirk wrote:
> The dselect's online help states, when describing key
> usage, the H or = will hold a package in its present
> state, and when describing the meaning of the symbols
> used in the 4 state columns that = denotes the package
> is on hold, and will not be processed at all.
> 
> I don't want texi2html or mctools-lite, and therefore
> don't need cddb, either.  So, I marked these 3 as yet
> uninstalled packages hold (=) thinking that dselect,
> wanting normally to install these recommendations
> would instead hold them in their uninstalled state.

Like I wrote in another mail I think dselect thinks packages marked as
on hold are in some form present on the system. And these on hold
packages might have an old version, incompatible with your updated
packages. So it keeps asking you to update those recommendations and
suggestions. At any rate dselect doesn't like the current status of
those packages and dselect is generally right.

The correct way to keep a package in its current uninstalled form is
*not* to put in on hold. The first time dselect presents you with a
recommended or suggested package that you don't want, simply decline
to install it. Next time dselect should not ask that question again.

In your case you have already marked the unwanted packages as on hold,
which obviously isn't working. So next time you get that screen, mark
them `uninstall' with `-' or probably better as `purge' with `_' to
also remove any config files that may somehow be present.


If that still doesn't work mail us the outcome of the following
command (root or normal user doesn't matter):

dpkg -l tetex-bin texi2html gramofile mctools-lite cddb

Here is the result on my system. I obviously made some other choices
on which packages I want, so your outcome should be quite different.
Ignore the Dutch language.

Gewenst=(U)Onbekend/Installeren/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Niet/geInstalleerd/Config/Uitgepakt/(F)config-mislukt/Half-geinst
|/ Fout?=(geen)/Hold/Reinst nodig/X=beide (Status,Fout: hoofdlett=ernstig)
||/ Naam   Versie Omschrijving
+++-==-==-
ii  tetex-bin  2.0.2-22   The teTeX binary files
ii  texi2html  1.66-1.2   Convert Texinfo files to HTML
pn  gramofile   (geen beschrijving beschikbaar)
pn  mctools-lite(geen beschrijving beschikbaar)
ii  cddb   2.6-17 CD DataBase support tools

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Re: dselect not respecting holds ?

[James Kirk]

--- Shaul Karl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 11:47:24AM -0800, James Kirk
> wrote:
> > Does anyone else (who still uses dselect) find
> that
> > dselect does not respect holds ?  A couple of
> packages
> > (tetex-bin, gramofile) I've installed have
> > recommends/suggests (texi2html, mctools-lite,
> cddb)
> > that don't interest me.  I marked them hold in the
> > dependecies conflict resolution window that popped
> up
> > when I first selected tetex-bin and gramofile.
> > 
> > However, everytime I use dselect, I am presented
> with
> > these same recommends/suggests.  
> > 
> > ---
> > dselect-recursive package listing mark:+/=/- ...
> > help:?
> > EIOM Pri Section  Package  Description
> >  *** Opt tex  tetex-binteTeX binary files 
>
> >  
> >  *** Xtr soundgramofileTransfer sound
> from...
> >   =* Opt soundcddb CD DataBase
> support...
> >   =* Opt soundmctools-lite A CD player and
> > audio...
> >   =* Opt text texi2htmlConvert Texinfo
> > files...
> > ---
> > 
> > I am finding it wearisome to have to remove the
> > install tag and hit "Q" everytime I
> install/uninstall
> > something else.
> > 
> 
> 
>   I didn't use dselect for a long time. Are you 
> sure you can't instruct dselect to install only 
> the new versions of the packages you are interested
> in? Wasn't there an option in the screen you have
> shown to step through every package and remove 
> the mark for install for the packages you are not
> interested in? Wasn't there some global options
> that you haven't mentioned? have you looked at the
> help menus (? if I remember correctly)? I believe
> dselect does remember your hold mark. The `='
> character from above shows that. Have you tried 
> the `V', (or is it `v'?) to get a more verbal
> display?
> 

Sorry, I don't think I've explained myself properly.  

I while ago I installed tetex-bin and gramofile. 
tetex-bin recommends texi2html.  gramofile recommends
mctools-lite, which in turn depends on cddb.

   tetex-bin
 |
  \_ recommends -> texi2html

   gramofile
 |
  \_ recommends -> mctools-lite
 |
  \_ depends -> cddb


The dselect's online help states, when describing key
usage, the H or = will hold a package in its present
state, and when describing the meaning of the symbols
used in the 4 state columns that = denotes the package
is on hold, and will not be processed at all.

I don't want texi2html or mctools-lite, and therefore
don't need cddb, either.  So, I marked these 3 as yet
uninstalled packages hold (=) thinking that dselect,
wanting normally to install these recommendations
would instead hold them in their uninstalled state.

But, everytime I've used dselect, it has ignored my
desire not to have these recommended packages
installed.  Now, everytime I use dselect I am
presented with the dependencies/conflicts screen
changing the marks on texi2html, mctools-lite and cddb
from hold to install.

This is not a problem, but rather a pain in the neck. 
I'd rather not have to remark these packages as
uninstalled/purged everytime I use dselect.   It looks
like either hold doesn't work on uninstalled packages,
or that this is a problem with dselect.

Thanks.




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Re: dselect not respecting holds ?

[Shaul Karl]

On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 11:47:24AM -0800, James Kirk wrote:
> Does anyone else (who still uses dselect) find that
> dselect does not respect holds ?  A couple of packages
> (tetex-bin, gramofile) I've installed have
> recommends/suggests (texi2html, mctools-lite, cddb)
> that don't interest me.  I marked them hold in the
> dependecies conflict resolution window that popped up
> when I first selected tetex-bin and gramofile.
> 
> However, everytime I use dselect, I am presented with
> these same recommends/suggests.  
> 
> ---
> dselect-recursive package listing mark:+/=/- ...
> help:?
> EIOM Pri Section  Package  Description
>  *** Opt tex  tetex-binteTeX binary files 
>  
>  *** Xtr soundgramofileTransfer sound from...
>   =* Opt soundcddb CD DataBase support...
>   =* Opt soundmctools-lite A CD player and
> audio...
>   =* Opt text texi2htmlConvert Texinfo
> files...
> ---
> 
> I am finding it wearisome to have to remove the
> install tag and hit "Q" everytime I install/uninstall
> something else.
> 


  I didn't use dselect for a long time. Are you sure you can't instruct
dselect to install only the new versions of the packages you are 
interested in? Wasn't there an option in the screen you have shown to
step through every package and remove the mark for install for the 
packages you are not interested in? Wasn't there some global options
that you haven't mentioned? have you looked at the help menus (? if I
remember correctly)?
I believe dselect does remember your hold mark. The `=' character from
above shows that. Have you tried the `V', (or is it `v'?) to get a more
verbal display?


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Re: dselect not respecting holds ?

[Maurits van Rees]

On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 11:47:24AM -0800, James Kirk wrote:
> Does anyone else (who still uses dselect) find that
> dselect does not respect holds ?  A couple of packages
> (tetex-bin, gramofile) I've installed have
> recommends/suggests (texi2html, mctools-lite, cddb)
> that don't interest me.  I marked them hold in the
> dependecies conflict resolution window that popped up
> when I first selected tetex-bin and gramofile.
> 
> However, everytime I use dselect, I am presented with
> these same recommends/suggests.  

When you put a package on hold, it means that you have that package
installed and want to keep the current version instead of upgrading to
a newer one. If you don't need these packages, then I suggest you
remove or purge them.

Mostly when I have a package A on hold `=' and package B wants to take
it off hold and install it `*', then package B is depending on a newer
version of A than is currently installed. That newer version may or
may not be available. B apparently can't work with the current version
of A. Browsing through the conflict dependency screen in dselect
should give more info on what exactly is the problem and why some
packages are being taken `off hold'. You may want to share that info
with us or list what versions of these packages you have.

BTW, I notice a line in the info on texi2html version 1.66-1.2:
Replaces: tetex-bin (<< 1.0.7)
Might this somehow cause problems on your system?

I'm not sure if this post was helpful. Basically, when a package
recommends another package that you don't care about you can decline
to install it or you can follow dselects lead and agree to install
it. But don't put it on hold. That would mean that you keep the
current version which doesn't make much sense when you don't care
about that package.

-- 
Maurits van Rees | http://maurits.vanrees.org/ [Dutch/Nederlands]
"Let your advance worrying become advance thinking and planning."
 - Winston Churchill


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Re: dselect?

[Jules Dubois]

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:55:04 +0100, Brian Potkin wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 11:07:02PM -0600, s. keeling wrote:
> 
>> Incoming from Jules Dubois:
>> > 
>> > Synaptic.  It's what I used until I read Joey Hess' article, titled
>> > something like "9 reasons to use aptitude instead of apt-get".
>> 
>> Por favor, where is that article?
> 
> Perhaps this is the article Jules recollected:
> 
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/10/msg01725.html

That only has seven reasons!  I also found references to eight reasons,
although I don't suppose there's much difference between seven, eight, and
nine. 

The message to which I referred is available from Google

  http://www.google.com/groups?selm=1NfOB-5Eu-1%40gated-at.bofh.it

I got the "heading" correct, but the message's subject was "Re: To dselect
or aptitude, that is the question".  In the three minutes I spent
searching, I couldn't find the thread in the Debian archives.


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Re: dselect?

[Brian Potkin]

On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 11:07:02PM -0600, s. keeling wrote:

> Incoming from Jules Dubois:
> > 
> > Synaptic.  It's what I used until I read Joey Hess' article, titled
> > something like "9 reasons to use aptitude instead of apt-get".
> 
> Por favor, where is that article?

Perhaps this is the article Jules recollected:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/10/msg01725.html

Brian.


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Re: dselect?

[Greg Madden]

On Friday 29 October 2004 08:30 pm, Jules Dubois wrote:
> On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:46:22 +0800, Lian Liming wrote:
> > Is there any other tool that can do such the things that dselect
> > can do.
>
> I think 'aptitude' is the most powerful package manager available.  I
> recommend it.
>
> > If there is graphic tool, that would be better.
>
> Synaptic.  It's what I used until I read Joey Hess' article, titled
> something like "9 reasons to use aptitude instead of apt-get".

apt-get will not install recommends or suggests, nor offer a way to do 
it. Dselect, I like it, or aptitude will offer to install/satisfy 
depends. I have never used synaptic.

-- 
Greg C. Madden


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Re: dselect?

[Paul Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Lian Liming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Hi all,
> I find the debian tool dselect is too hard for me, a debian newbie, :) .

Yeah, I never really cared for dselect, myself.

> Is there any other tool that can do such the things that dselect
> can do. If there is graphic tool, that would be better.  Thanks.

aptitude works nicely with the mouse in an xterm.  Never log in as
root, especially to X, KDE, Gnome, etc.  I suggest using the command
su -m in your favorite terminal program to get root from a normal user
account, as this will put fewer processes with unrestricted, unlimited
access.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBgybIUzgNqloQMwcRAtH+AJ0Tv68DRDo/kBEc0r22HilfwqaSxACgtahP
VFkkYPwp5L/gxpijBih5TQo=
=bs9U
-END PGP SIGNATURE-


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Re: dselect?

[s. keeling]

Incoming from Jules Dubois:
> On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:46:22 +0800, Lian Liming wrote:
> 
> > Is there any other tool that can do such the things that dselect can 
> > do.
> 
> I think 'aptitude' is the most powerful package manager available.  I
> recommend it.
> 
> > If there is graphic tool, that would be better.
> 
> Synaptic.  It's what I used until I read Joey Hess' article, titled
> something like "9 reasons to use aptitude instead of apt-get".

Por favor, where is that article?


-- 
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(*)http://www.spots.ab.ca/~keeling  Please don't Cc: me.
- -


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Re: dselect?

[Jules Dubois]

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 09:46:22 +0800, Lian Liming wrote:

> Is there any other tool that can do such the things that dselect can 
> do.

I think 'aptitude' is the most powerful package manager available.  I
recommend it.

> If there is graphic tool, that would be better.

Synaptic.  It's what I used until I read Joey Hess' article, titled
something like "9 reasons to use aptitude instead of apt-get".


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Re: dselect?

[s. keeling]

Incoming from J. Hannemann:
> 
> >   I find the debian tool dselect is too hard for me,
> > a debian newbie, :) .
> >   Is there any other tool that can do such the
> > things that dselect can 
> > do. If there is graphic tool, that would be better.
> 
> You can bypass dselect and use apt to install anything
> you want.  Make sure you choose "desktop environment"
> so you get X (graphical environment).
> 
> There is a GUI frontend for apt--synaptic.

There's also aptitude.  Others who know far more about it than me
recommend aptitude over the alternatives.

  apt-get update
  apt-get install aptitude
  aptitude update
  aptitude upgrade
  aptitude search something
  aptitude install blah


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Re: dselect?

[J. Hannemann]

--- Lian Liming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>   I find the debian tool dselect is too hard for me,
> a debian newbie, :) .
>   Is there any other tool that can do such the
> things that dselect can 
> do. If there is graphic tool, that would be better.
>   Thanks.
> 
> 
> -- 
> To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
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> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> 
===
You can bypass dselect and use apt to install anything
you want.  Make sure you choose "desktop environment"
so you get X (graphical environment).

There is a GUI frontend for apt--synaptic.

=
FreeBSD
http://www.freebsd.org



__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 


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Re: dselect disorientation

[Dieter]

O sorry for that noise!
I have my orientation back:
I installed (some times ago) upgrade-system and this package installed
/etc/apt/preferences
(which is unusable for my dist-selection).

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Re: dselect disorientation

[Jim Bailey]

On Aug 07, 09:32, Dieter wrote:
> I lost the orientation with dselect.-( Can anyone tell how to get it
> back?-) I think I made somathing wrong but I don't know what.
> I don't understand why there are so many packages to be removed and
> downgraded.
> Is there a good way to get a "clean" status back.
> 
Yes 'R' for revert will reset dselect, type '?' in deselect for a list
of help files, 'k' for list of keystrokes.

Peace Jim
-- 
keys:  http://freesolutions.net/jim/pubkey.asc

 I would have made a good Pope.
 --Richard Nixon


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Re: dselect installing packages I didn't request

[Matt Perry]

On Sat, 31 Jul 2004, Florian Ernst wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 11:50:23AM -0700, Matt Perry wrote:
> > Why does dselect want to install packages that I haven't requested?  I'm 
> > not talking about dependencies.  Here's how to replicate what I'm seeing.
> > [...]
> > Why is dselect wanting to install packages that I didn't request?
> 
> AFAIK dselect installs packages of priority 'standard' or higher by
> default, you'll need to explicitly deselect them.

Thanks for the note Florian.  That explains it.

-- 
Matt Perry | matt at primefactor dot com


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Re: dselect installing packages I didn't request

[Florian Ernst]

Hello!

On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 11:50:23AM -0700, Matt Perry wrote:
> Why does dselect want to install packages that I haven't requested?  I'm 
> not talking about dependencies.  Here's how to replicate what I'm seeing.
> [...]
> Why is dselect wanting to install packages that I didn't request?

AFAIK dselect installs packages of priority 'standard' or higher by
default, you'll need to explicitly deselect them.

True, some of the packages you mentioned are only 'optional' (like
w3m) in Woody, but they are at least 'standard' on Sarge which you
apparently want to upgrade to.

HTH,
Flo


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Re: dselect alternatives

[ricktaylor]

> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> Yesterday apt-get maliciously lunched my install (okay, okay, I was
> trying to upgrade firestarter even though apt-get told me to file a bug 
> report because it thought the install was impossible...  more on that coming
> up soon).

 :} I'd think this might have been your first clue...



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Re: dselect alternatives

[listcomm]

 
>  What are you thinking dselect does for you that apt-get doesn't?

well, this is just an anecdote (the singular of data...), but -

Yesterday apt-get maliciously lunched my install(okay, okay, I was
trying
to upgrade firestarter even though apt-get told me to file a bug report
because it thought the install was impossible...  more on that coming up
soon).
The X server died horribly, screaming, as a result of things it needed
having
been scurrilously removed by "apt-get" (which did sort of warn me that
it was
had probably clobbered my X-server install) (but only after having
already
done it, of curse).  I only had terminal login.

After a 4-hour late-night knock-down drag-out with apt-get, dpkg, and
dselect, trying
to figure out a way back to from where I came, I was finally able to
rescue
the install with dselect.  Telling it to reconfigure everything it
didn't
like and then reinstall everything it did like, brought my install back
to
life.  (I was *really* convinced I was looking at a complete reload...)

apt-get and dpkg kept generating interlocking package interdependencies
that
they *just* *could* *not* resolve...

There is probably some obscure combination of command syntax and control
file
entries for either apt-get or dpkg or both that would accomplish the
same
thing, but no amount of man-page-reading and website-trolling (via
Gatesware, since my Debian install was dead) conveyed the
appropriate incantations...  "dselect", on the other hand,
despite its blatant inoperability as regards configuring specific
behaviors,
*was* able to diagnose the corrupted dependencies and rescue the
installation,
even when operated by a complete idiot.

(Pages and pages of dismal output logs from apt-get and dpkg available
on
demand, if anyone's interested) (which I wouldn't be, if I were you)

(No, I DON'T know what I'm doing, I only do what the voices in my head
tell me)

(Last night, just before I finally rescued the install, they were
telling
me to clean my guns)


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Re: dselect alternatives

[ricktaylor]

> From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> Aptitude, apt-get and dpkg are more than enough to help me out in a
> command line environ. Actually I do not use any other interfaces for
> package management.

 Then... Why are you complaining?



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Re: dselect alternatives

[ricktaylor]

> From: Steven Satelle [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:57:43 +, ricktaylor wrote:
> >  Personally, I'd use kpackage or synaptic in X and dselect in a terminal
> >  {mainly because synaptic and kpackage are easier to read... the
> 
> I've always found that unless I stick to one package manager - synaptic at
> the moment, they resolve deps differently so while running synaptic
> says everything is ok, aptitude says there are unresolved deps, so it
> decides I need to remove a bunch of packages, I remember once, dselect
> decided I needed to remove nearly the whole damm system, and since I
> wasnt actually watching what it was saying I said ok. I've used aptitude
> for a while but I prefer synaptic's search capabilities. The only thing
> wrong with it is by default I like to view my packages grouped by section,
> which I need to set up manually 

 I don't think I've ever had that happen. If I have a problem I usually switch to 
dselect. I just feel like I have more control. 

Synaptic on Redhat has a menu entry for the above... I've not used Debian since last 
year some time... I don't know what the differences between versions of Synaptic are. 

 I am going to set up the AMD64 thing real soon... :}

 



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Re: dselect alternatives

[Brian Nelson]

Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 06:39, Paul Johnson wrote:
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>> 
>> >> From: Paul Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >> Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> >> > DO NOT USE dselect!
>> >
>> >  Why not?
>> 
>> Why are you asking me?  It wasn't me that said it...
>
> Sorry it was ME. Dselect though still useful... is really all about
> installations, no not After install, during machine initial setup.
>
> ever seen:  apt-get dselect-upgrade
>
> It takes the setting from "dpkg --set-selections" and runs it through
> the mill.
>
> Apt-get has MUCH MUCH better dependency handling (yes I know about that
> in dselect). Ask Joey Hess about dselect, he will flatly tell you to not
> use dselect. 

I'd be surprised by that.  I seem to recall Joey switching to aptitude,
but I don't recall hearing him ever complain about dselect.

> I believe Colin will have similar recommends.

I'm pretty sure Colin still uses dselect.  In fact most developers still
have a soft spot for dselect.

> apt-get is flat out much better. 

I'd ask you to back that up, but I know you can't...

> Some people are now recommending aptitude as it has a more sane
> handling of suggests and recommends.

Actually, I've seen aptitude do some pretty bizarre things when it comes
to dependency resolution.  More than once I've noticed it pulling in
packages from experimental without my consent.  That's a definite no-no.

-- 
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Re: dselect alternatives

[Greg Folkert]

On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 19:57, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 16:46, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > > > From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > > 
> > > > Apt-get has MUCH MUCH better dependency handling (yes I know
> about that
> > > 
> > >  How's that?
> > 
> > Mainly apt-get doesn't screw with things that way dselect does, in
> its
> > nearly-prehistoric methods. Like doing things for you, that you
> > shouldn't without asking "Hey, Girl-Pants! Are you really sure you
> want
> > to be STUPID?"
> > 
> > If you want apt-get|aptitude to act similarly there are options for
> em,
> > other wise apt-get|aptitude behave much more friendly.
> 
> This is the man page {man apt-get at google} for apt-get, etc. 
> http://annys.eines.info/cgi-bin/man/man2html?8+apt-get
> http://annys.eines.info/cgi-bin/man/man2html?8+dselect
> http://annys.eines.info/cgi-bin/man/man2html?8+dpkg

or how about from a command line:

man apt-get
man dselect
man dpkg


>  Read the description on the dselect man page.

I have before, but here is the line you mean:

DESCRIPTION
dselect is one of the primary user interfaces for
managing packages on a Debian system.

Let me see.

dselect is *ONE* of the primary user *INTERFACES*

Dog Poo is sufficient to feed you with, you will survive, you may even
grow in size, eating enough of it. But why would you choose to eat Dog
Poo when there is a Good Ole' Hamburger with everything on it sitting
right next to it under a cover? Because you didn't know it was there.

Yes, I akin dselect as a good interface up to and including potato.
After that I do think it has been past it's prime. Yes it still CAN and
DOES pull the bacon from the fire, when it needs to. But puh-lease, it
is only primary because it was there first. A Good first stab at an
interface.

Aptitude is excellent for a curses based interface. Much easier to use
for new-type people. Track auto-installed packages MUCH better. apt-get
is my preferred method of upgrades. I have a pretty long history of
being able to manage with apt-get and straight dpkg after some have
blown-up machines using dselect and it's... umm whacked way of helping
out. dselect has very archaic layout and operational characteristics
that easily confuse new users to Debian, but previously using RedHat or
Mandrake etc... making them Familiar to Linux, but baffled by dselect.

Aptitude, apt-get and dpkg are more than enough to help me out in a
command line environ. Actually I do not use any other interfaces for
package management.

>  I've broken installs with any and all of the above mentioned
> programs. {I've broken installs with every package manager on debian.}
> The real point there is that "I" broke them.

No, arguing there, every machine that broke during an upgrade... was due
to my lack of attention.

>  If you take your time, pay attention to what you're doing, don't try
> to upgrade a huge number of packages at once and are just plain
> careful you don't really have many problems. {Doing the distribution
> upgrade thing is arguably safer. ...Those will break too. They are a
> little more cut and dried, all of the dependencies are covered,
> etc...}  
> 
>  Personally, I'd use kpackage or synaptic in X and dselect in a
> terminal {mainly because synaptic and kpackage are easier to read...
> the on-screen information is a little better organized and so on.}. I
> think the most important part of the whole thing is to go at it a few
> packages at a time and 
> try to keep things upgraded across the board. It's when you start
> holding packages or neglecting to fix broken, low-level stuff that you
> start to have problems.

Yep, I only hold when I have definite issues with explicit versions.

>  What are you thinking dselect does for you that apt-get doesn't?

For me, it brings me more consulting work from befuddled users/admins
that hit a couple of wrong keys and bork up the production machine by
remove things needed!

So, maybe I *AM* wrong about not liking dselect!
-- 
greg, [EMAIL PROTECTED]

The technology that is
Stronger, better, faster:  Linux


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Re: dselect alternatives

[Steven Satelle]

On Tue, 13 Jul 2004 23:57:43 +, ricktaylor wrote:

> 
>  Personally, I'd use kpackage or synaptic in X and dselect in a terminal
>  {mainly because synaptic and kpackage are easier to read... the

I've always found that unless I stick to one package manager - synaptic at
the moment, they resolve deps differently so while running synaptic
says everything is ok, aptitude says there are unresolved deps, so it
decides I need to remove a bunch of packages, I remember once, dselect
decided I needed to remove nearly the whole damm system, and since I
wasnt actually watching what it was saying I said ok. I've used aptitude
for a while but I prefer synaptic's search capabilities. The only thing
wrong with it is by default I like to view my packages grouped by section,
which I need to set up manually 


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Re: dselect alternatives

[ricktaylor]

> From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 16:46, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > > From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >
> > > Apt-get has MUCH MUCH better dependency handling (yes I know about that
> >
> >  How's that?
>
> Mainly apt-get doesn't screw with things that way dselect does, in its
> nearly-prehistoric methods. Like doing things for you, that you
> shouldn't without asking "Hey, Girl-Pants! Are you really sure you want
> to be STUPID?"
>
> If you want apt-get|aptitude to act similarly there are options for em,
> other wise apt-get|aptitude behave much more friendly.

This is the man page {man apt-get at google} for apt-get, etc.
http://annys.eines.info/cgi-bin/man/man2html?8+apt-get
http://annys.eines.info/cgi-bin/man/man2html?8+dselect
http://annys.eines.info/cgi-bin/man/man2html?8+dpkg

 Read the description on the dselect man page.

 I've broken installs with any and all of the above mentioned programs. {I've broken 
installs with every package manager on debian.} The real point there is that "I" broke 
them.

 If you take your time, pay attention to what you're doing, don't try to upgrade a 
huge number of packages at once and are just plain careful you don't really have many 
problems. {Doing the distribution upgrade thing is arguably safer. ...Those will break 
too. They are a little more cut and dried, all of the dependencies are covered, etc...}

 Personally, I'd use kpackage or synaptic in X and dselect in a terminal {mainly 
because synaptic and kpackage are easier to read... the on-screen information is a 
little better organized and so on.}. I think the most important part of the whole 
thing is to go at it a few packages at a time and
try to keep things upgraded across the board. It's when you start holding packages or 
neglecting to fix broken, low-level stuff that you start to have problems.

 What are you thinking dselect does for you that apt-get doesn't?

Re: dselect alternatives

[Greg Folkert]

On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 16:46, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> > Apt-get has MUCH MUCH better dependency handling (yes I know about that
> 
>  How's that?

I am subscribed to D-U.

Mainly apt-get doesn't screw with things that way dselect does, in its
nearly-prehistoric methods. Like doing things for you, that you
shouldn't without asking "Hey, Girl-Pants! Are you really sure you want
to be STUPID?"

If you want apt-get|aptitude to act similarly there are options for em,
other wise apt-get|aptitude behave much more friendly.
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Re: dselect alternatives

[ricktaylor]

> From: Greg Folkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> Apt-get has MUCH MUCH better dependency handling (yes I know about that

 How's that?



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Re: dselect alternatives

[Clive Menzies]

On (13/07/04 13:36), Thomas Adam wrote:
> --- Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
>  
> > apt-get is flat out much better. Some people are now recommending
> > aptitude as it has a more sane handling of suggests and recommends.
> 
> Horses for courses. Aptitude is *far* from a useable product.
FWIW I've been tracking sid using aptitude since last December. I'm
pretty sure that had I used apt-get I would have broken my system 
several times by now.  The combination of apt-listbugs and aptitude has
saved me from my own ignorance thus far.

Horses for courses is undoubtedly right but aptitude seems a good horse
for someone who is not very technical (like me) but wants to use sid
without losing functionality from time to time.

Regards

Clive

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Re: dselect alternatives

[Thomas Adam]

--- Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: 
 
> apt-get is flat out much better. Some people are now recommending
> aptitude as it has a more sane handling of suggests and recommends.

Horses for courses. Aptitude is *far* from a useable product.

-- Thomas Adam

=
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experience will probably kill you. :)"

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Re: dselect alternatives

[Greg Folkert]

On Tue, 2004-07-13 at 06:39, Paul Johnson wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> 
> >> From: Paul Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >> Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >> > On Mon, 2004-07-12 at 22:35, William F. Dudley Jr. wrote:
> >
> >> >> I was trying to figure out why xsane was dumping core,
> >> >> and fiddling with package selections using dselect,
> >> >> and now dselect wants to uninstall most of the packages:
> >> >
> >> > DO NOT USE dselect!
> >
> >  Why not?
> 
> Why are you asking me?  It wasn't me that said it...

Sorry it was ME. Dselect though still useful... is really all about
installations, no not After install, during machine initial setup.

ever seen:  apt-get dselect-upgrade

It takes the setting from "dpkg --set-selections" and runs it through
the mill.

Apt-get has MUCH MUCH better dependency handling (yes I know about that
in dselect). Ask Joey Hess about dselect, he will flatly tell you to not
use dselect. I believe Colin will have similar recommends.

apt-get is flat out much better. Some people are now recommending
aptitude as it has a more sane handling of suggests and recommends.

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Re: dselect alternatives

[Paul Johnson]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

>> From: Paul Johnson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Greg Folkert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> > On Mon, 2004-07-12 at 22:35, William F. Dudley Jr. wrote:
>
>> >> I was trying to figure out why xsane was dumping core,
>> >> and fiddling with package selections using dselect,
>> >> and now dselect wants to uninstall most of the packages:
>> >
>> > DO NOT USE dselect!
>
>  Why not?

Why are you asking me?  It wasn't me that said it...


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Re: dselect won't show newer version, apt does. (was Re: gimp dependency problems in Sid)

[Carl Fink]

On Fri, Jul 02, 2004 at 12:44:30PM -0400, H. S. wrote:

> dselect shows gimp-2.0.2-2, but "apt-get -s install gimp" shows that 
> 2.0.2-3 version will be installed. I added a couple of other apt sourced 
> (one in Germany and one in Neatherlands), and dselect and apt-get still 
> show the same information as before. So I have just install gimp with 
> apt-get. Wonder what is wrong with dselect.

I missed the beginning of this thread, but did you do an "update" in
dselect?
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Re: dselect issues with woody update

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 01:13:54PM -0500, Christopher J. Noyes wrote:
> I downloaded the woody update image and wrote to a cd. I tried to use
> dselect to install from it. I tried using CD-ROM but it didn't work.
> It had setup apt as the method so I tried it and tried to point it to
> the right places on the CD-ROM. I got that far and selected modules
> and went to install it, but when it went to install the modules it
> complained that it couldn't find the .deb files which are their on the
> CD-ROM. Anyone have any clues.

Could you cut-and-paste the exact error message, please, preferably with
a transcript of what you did to provoke it? Paraphrased explanations are
useful for context, but it turns out to be quite difficult to make out
what's going on from a paraphrase as opposed to just seeing the exact
text from your screen.

(I suspect, though, that you might not have run 'apt-cdrom add'.)

Cheers,

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Re: dselect refusing to upgrade packages in unstable?

[Henry Hollenberg]

Chris wrote:
On Sun, 2004-02-22 at 18:55, Henry Hollenberg wrote: 

Henry Hollenberg wrote:

I keep getting a line from dselect about packages that will
not be upgraded:
98 upgraded, 36 newly installed, 0 to remove and 71 not upgraded.

I wonder, have I screwed something up?



Regardless of how this came to be, all you need to do is read.

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxt-dev:

 libxt-dev depends on libxt6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxt6 is not installed.


Try installing that one first. See what happens.

Chris


Checked into that and dselect showed libxt6 as being selected for
installation alreadyI didn't "+" it honest!
I did look around and noticed xlib was not marked for installation
so I marked it "+".
I also noticed a message about "correcting dependencys" go by...

after about three more runs of dselect all the errors sorted themselves
out and the packages installed...
I had previosly run dselect serveral times in a row with no luck
so I don't know what happened...either one of the developers fixed
some dependency issues or it was the xlib package.
Thanks for the help, hgh.
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Re: dselect refusing to upgrade packages in unstable?

[Chris]

On Sun, 2004-02-22 at 18:55, Henry Hollenberg wrote: 
> Henry Hollenberg wrote:
> > I keep getting a line from dselect about packages that will
> > not be upgraded:
> > 
> > 98 upgraded, 36 newly installed, 0 to remove and 71 not upgraded.
> > 
> > I wonder, have I screwed something up?
> > 

Regardless of how this came to be, all you need to do is read.

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxt-dev:
>   libxt-dev depends on libxt6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
>Package libxt6 is not installed.

Try installing that one first. See what happens.

Chris


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Re: dselect refusing to upgrade packages in unstable?

[Henry Hollenberg]

Henry Hollenberg wrote:
I keep getting a line from dselect about packages that will
not be upgraded:
98 upgraded, 36 newly installed, 0 to remove and 71 not upgraded.

I wonder, have I screwed something up?

Here is my "cat /etc/apt/sources.list":

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib 
non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

deb http://debian.fabbione.net/debian-ipv6 sid ipv6

The "71 not upgraded used to be  50-something".  It's growing!

Thanks, hgh
Here are some more packages involved hanging up in dpkg/dselect:

Press enter to continue.
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxt-dev:
 libxt-dev depends on libxt6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxt6 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing libxt-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libice-dev:
 libice-dev depends on libice6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libice6 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing libice-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxmuu-dev:
 libxmuu-dev depends on libxmuu1 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxmuu1 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing libxmuu-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxtrap-dev:
 libxtrap-dev depends on libxtrap6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxtrap6 is not installed.
 libxtrap-dev depends on libxt-dev; however:
  Package libxt-dev is not configured yet.
 libxtrap-dev depends on libice-dev; however:
  Package libice-dev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libxtrap-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxi-dev:
 libxi-dev depends on libxi6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxi6 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing libxi-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxmu-dev:
 libxmu-dev depends on libxmu6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxmu6 is not installed.
 libxmu-dev depends on libxt-dev; however:
  Package libxt-dev is not configured yet.
 libxmu-dev depends on libice-dev; however:
  Package libice-dev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libxmu-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxp-dev:
 libxp-dev depends on libxp6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxp6 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing libxp-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libx11-dev:
 libx11-dev depends on libx11-6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libx11-6 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing libx11-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxrandr-dev:
 libxrandr-dev depends on libxrandr2 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxrandr2 is not installed.
 libxrandr-dev depends on libx11-dev; however:
  Package libx11-dev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libxrandr-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libxpm-dev:
 libxpm-dev depends on libxpm4 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libxpm4 is not installed.
 libxpm-dev depends on libx11-dev; however:
  Package libx11-dev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libxpm-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of xlibs-dev:
 xlibs-dev depends on libice-dev; however:
  Package libice-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libx11-dev; however:
  Package libx11-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxi-dev; however:
  Package libxi-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxmu-dev; however:
  Package libxmu-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxmuu-dev; however:
  Package libxmuu-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxp-dev; however:
  Package libxp-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxpm-dev; however:
  Package libxpm-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxrandr-dev; however:
  Package libxrandr-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxt-dev; however:
  Package libxt-dev is not configured yet.
 xlibs-dev depends on libxtrap-dev; however:
  Package libxtrap-dev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing xlibs-dev (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libsm-dev:
 libsm-dev depends on libsm6 (= 4.3.0-2); however:
  Package libsm6 is not installed.
 libsm-dev depends on libice-dev; however:
  Package libice-dev is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing libsm-dev (--configure)

Re: dselect refusing to upgrade packages in unstable?

[Clive Menzies]

On (19/02/04 20:54), Henry Hollenberg wrote:
> I keep getting a line from dselect about packages that will
> not be upgraded:
> 
> 98 upgraded, 36 newly installed, 0 to remove and 71 not upgraded.
> 
> I wonder, have I screwed something up?

This morning I upgraded using aptitude and experienced something similar.
There were three serious bug reports: libmailtools-perl perl mime-support 
and so when given the option to abandon the upgrade, I did so.

However, back in the aptitude screen, it showed only a few packages to be
upgraded but a larger number shown as upgradeable but not flagged as
such.  I manually changed their status to "u"pgrade and re-ran the
upgrade (having held the three packages with serious bugs).

Everything, worked fine after that.

So I don't think your sources.list is necessarily the problem.  It is a
while since I used dselect but you may be able to force the upgrade as I
did.  Alternatively, you could try aptitude.  It takes a little while to
get used to but it makes the sid upgrades less stressful - is it going to
break? ;)  Its interactive nature means that you can abandon the upgrade
should you receive unnerving warnings.

HTH

Clive

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Re: dselect and glib troubles.

[Peter Samuelson]

[NaNu]
> I want to install the latest version of XMMS that requires glib >=
> 1.2.2 Using dselect, I found out that I have 2 versions of glib
> installed: 1.2.10.4 and 2.2.3-0jds. I suspect that the ./configure
> script of XMMS detects the older version instead of the newest one.

It does.  glib 1.2 and glib 2.x are not really compatible.

> How do I do to make the newest replace the oldest?

Because they're not compatible, so a program that uses 1.2 cannot
suddenly use 2.2 without at least a recompile, and possibly without a
few source changes.

If they were compatible, there would be only one package name in
Debian, and its version would go from 1.2 to 2.0 to 2.2, and a newer
one would replace an older one.

The fact that there are two separate packages in Debian that provide
different glib versions is specifically because this is required in
order to support older applications.

In other words, this is all working as it's supposed to, and there is
no problem here except in your mind.  (:

Peter


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Re: dselect and custom compiled package

[Wolfgang Pfeiffer]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 21:29, Greg Folkert wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 14:42, bob wrote:
> > I have custom compiled and installed the midnight commander package to
> > include mcserve.  My version of the package is 4.5.55-1.2woody2. I
> > used the latest sources from security.debian.org.  Now, whenever I run
> > dselect, it wants to install the binary from security.debian.org which
> > would overwrite my custom installation.  I am looking for some advice
> > on how to keep this from happening.  I have read about pinning a
> > specific version but I am thinking that may not be the correct way to
> > go because my custom version and the official version have the same
> > name and version.  Perhaps I need to have a custom version number. Any
> > input would be appreciated.
> 
> as root at a cli prompt:
> 
> echo "mc hold" | dpkg --set-selections


... and the docs for things like "holding" Debian packages are here:



This page helped me a lot on keeping packages I didn't want to get
changed by an upgrade. Thanks, Debian folks ... :)

HTH

Best Regards
Wolfgang

> 
> That should take care of the problems.
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Re: dselect and custom compiled package

[Paul Johnson]

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Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 09:17:53PM -0800, bob wrote:
> Thank you.  Worked perfectly.

No problem, glad to be of assistance.

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Re: dselect and custom compiled package

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Feb 05, 2004 at 11:42:59AM -0800, bob wrote:
> I have custom compiled and installed the midnight commander package to
> include mcserve.  My version of the package is 4.5.55-1.2woody2. I
> used the latest sources from security.debian.org.  Now, whenever I run
> dselect, it wants to install the binary from security.debian.org which
> would overwrite my custom installation.  I am looking for some advice
> on how to keep this from happening.  I have read about pinning a
> specific version but I am thinking that may not be the correct way to
> go because my custom version and the official version have the same
> name and version.  Perhaps I need to have a custom version number.

Indeed you do. Just increment the version by a bit (e.g.
4.5.55-1.2woody2.1) when you build the source package.

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Re: dselect and custom compiled package

[Monique Y. Herman]

On 2004-02-05, bob penned:
>
> I have custom compiled and installed the midnight commander package to
> include mcserve.  My version of the package is 4.5.55-1.2woody2. I
> used the latest sources from security.debian.org.  Now, whenever I run
> dselect, it wants to install the binary from security.debian.org which
> would overwrite my custom installation.  I am looking for some advice
> on how to keep this from happening.  I have read about pinning a
> specific version but I am thinking that may not be the correct way to
> go because my custom version and the official version have the same
> name and version.  Perhaps I need to have a custom version number. Any
> input would be appreciated.
>

I think the answer to my earlier question today may help you, too:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2004/debian-user-200402/msg00822.html

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Re: dselect and custom compiled package

[Greg Folkert]

On Thu, 2004-02-05 at 14:42, bob wrote:
> I have custom compiled and installed the midnight commander package to
> include mcserve.  My version of the package is 4.5.55-1.2woody2. I
> used the latest sources from security.debian.org.  Now, whenever I run
> dselect, it wants to install the binary from security.debian.org which
> would overwrite my custom installation.  I am looking for some advice
> on how to keep this from happening.  I have read about pinning a
> specific version but I am thinking that may not be the correct way to
> go because my custom version and the official version have the same
> name and version.  Perhaps I need to have a custom version number. Any
> input would be appreciated.

as root at a cli prompt:

echo "mc hold" | dpkg --set-selections

That should take care of the problems.
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Re: dselect: tell it to never mind?

[Russ Schneider]

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Colin Watson wrote:

> If you've fixed /etc/postgresql/pg_hba.conf manually, which you seemed
> to suggest you had, then just to make sure search for check_pg_hba_conf
> in /var/lib/dpkg/info/postgresql.postinst and try to work out why it
> still thinks that file is in an old format.
> 
> Also, it looks as if /usr/lib/postgresql/bin/convert.pg_hba.conf is
> buggy. Try removing the # at the beginning of line 3 and putting it at
> the beginning of line 4 instead, then run 'dpkg --configure postgresql'.

Yeah, I did that and it worked fine.  Drove me nuts though.

 
> Where did 7.3.4-10 come from, anyway? It doesn't appear to have ever
> been in Debian.

Got it from deb http://agrogeomatic.educagri.fr/debian stable main 

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Re: dselect: tell it to never mind?

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 05:17:43PM -0500, Russ Schneider wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Colin Watson wrote:
> > What does 'dpkg --configure ' say?
> 
> Setting up postgresql (7.3.4-10) ...
> Could not read /etc/postgresql/pg_hba.conf at 
> /usr/lib/postgresql/bin/convert.pg_hba.conf line 4.
> dpkg: error processing postgresql (--configure):
>  subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  postgresql

(Please mail just the list, not me as well. Thanks.)

If you've fixed /etc/postgresql/pg_hba.conf manually, which you seemed
to suggest you had, then just to make sure search for check_pg_hba_conf
in /var/lib/dpkg/info/postgresql.postinst and try to work out why it
still thinks that file is in an old format.

Also, it looks as if /usr/lib/postgresql/bin/convert.pg_hba.conf is
buggy. Try removing the # at the beginning of line 3 and putting it at
the beginning of line 4 instead, then run 'dpkg --configure postgresql'.

I think you should report a bug about this, even if that works. Note
that there's been a newer version of postgresql than 7.3.4-10 in
unstable for over a month now, although just from looking at it it would
appear that the bug is still there.

Where did 7.3.4-10 come from, anyway? It doesn't appear to have ever
been in Debian.

Cheers,

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Re: dselect: tell it to never mind?

[Russ Schneider]

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Colin Watson wrote:

> What does 'dpkg --configure ' say?

Setting up postgresql (7.3.4-10) ...
Could not read /etc/postgresql/pg_hba.conf at 
/usr/lib/postgresql/bin/convert.pg_hba.conf line 4.
dpkg: error processing postgresql (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 postgresql


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Re: dselect: tell it to never mind?

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 04:36:12PM -0500, Russ Schneider wrote:
> I'm trying to install a postgresql package.
> 
> dselect/apt choked on installation, and returned an error.
> 
> However, it seemed that it really did install it,a nd with a bit of
> manual tweaking, I got it to work.

Not entirely, apparently, at least not from dpkg's point of view ...

> However, dselect still is holding the package is some kind of queue
> and wants to try and install it every time I run dselect (always
> choking in the same error of course).

What does 'dpkg --configure ' say?

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Re: dselect update question

[Florian Ernst]

Hello Stephen!

On Sat, Jan 10, 2004 at 09:30:54PM +0800, Stephen Liu wrote:
It looks like /etc/dpkg/dselect.cfg contains rubbish. What are the
contents of that file?
Yes.  Following entry was found (only one line);

option = expert

I removed this line and then it worked normal.

What will be the funcetion of this line?
If formatted correctly (just a simple 'expert') it will cause dselect
to always act like being invoked as 'dselect --expert' (Turns on
expert mode, i.e. doesn't display possibly annoying help messages.)
See
man dselect.cfg
man dselect
for details.
HTH,
Flo


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Re: dselect update question

[Stephen Liu]

Hi Colin,

> > # dselect
> > dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success
>
> It looks like /etc/dpkg/dselect.cfg contains rubbish. What are the
> contents of that file?

Yes.  Following entry was found (only one line);

option = expert

I removed this line and then it worked normal.

What will be the funcetion of this line?

B.R.
Stephen


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Re: dselect update question

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 11:32:01PM +0800, Stephen Liu wrote:
> # dselect
> dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success

It looks like /etc/dpkg/dselect.cfg contains rubbish. What are the
contents of that file?

-- 
Colin Watson  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: dselect update question

[Stephen Liu]

Hi Greg,

Thanks for your advice.

- snip -

> > # dselect update
> > dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success
>
> You haven't selected any method.
>
> just run:
>
>   dselect
>
> and confinger it (option 0). Since you already have a sources.list...
> answer NO to the question.
>
> Then select Quit (option 6)

Something strange here

# dselect
dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success

# which dselect
/usr/bin/dselect

# /usr/bin/dselect
dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success

# ls -l /usr/bin/dselect
-rwxr-xr-x1 root root   154792 Oct 28 03:45 /usr/bin/dselect

Several days ago it worked

I have run following commands to fix OOo1.1

# dselect update
# apt-get dist-upgrade

Now "dselect" can't work.  Shall I reinstall it with 

# apt-get remove dselect

Then

# apt-get install dselect

B.R.
Stephen


>
> The you can run:
>
>   dselect update
>
>   deslect select
>
> then run:
>
>   apt-get dselect-upgrade
>
> BTW,
>
>   apt-get install aptitude
>
>   aptitude
>
> You will never go back to dselect.


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Re: dselect update question

[Greg Folkert]

On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 08:42, Stephen Liu wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> In running
> # dselect update
> dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success
> 
> What does it mean???  Can I ignore it and continue to proceed
> # dselect select
> # dselect install
> ???
> 
> # cat /etc/apt/sources.list
> >>>
> #deb copy:///cdrom/ sarge main
> 
> deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 
> Binary-1 (20031118)]/ unstable contrib main
> 
> deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
> deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
> 
> deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib
> 
> deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main  contrib
> deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main  contrib
> <<<
> 
> I also tried comment out
> # deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Sarge_ - Official NetInst Snapshot i386 
> Binary-1 (20031118)]/ unstable contrib main
> 
> #deb ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main  contrib
> #deb-src ftp://ftp.hk.debian.org/debian/ stable main  contrib
> 
> The same result.
> # dselect update
> dselect: configuration error: unknown option option: Success

You haven't selected any method.

just run: 

  dselect

and confinger it (option 0). Since you already have a sources.list...
answer NO to the question.

Then select Quit (option 6)

The you can run:

  dselect update

  deslect select

then run:

  apt-get dselect-upgrade

BTW, 

  apt-get install aptitude

  aptitude

You will never go back to dselect.
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Re: dselect/apt-get failed -- 6 year Debian installation corrupted

[Jameson C. Burt]

I have upgraded this computer's installation since 1997, about 6 years,
transferring the installed disk drives across 3 successively newer computers.
Two years ago, after upgrading several computers from potato to woody,
I found upgrading from potato to woody produced enough problems that
I never upgraded this one computer from potato to woody.

Finally attempting to upgrade this computer from potato to woody, 
I previously mentioned that "dslelect" wanted to remove most packages,
including essential packages.
Referring to Release Notes for woody and others' archived mail,
I considered the recommended
   apt-get install   dpkg apt debconf
but this also failed, complaining about the need for several old packages,
yet apt-get should install all the packages it needs.
I considered a full
   apt-get  dist-upgrade
which I should have done and did do on other computers 2 years ago, 
upgrading from potato to woody.
As I recall, on those upgrades I did 2 years ago from potato to woody,
problems arose as several installation scripts failed,
but I was able to make repairs.

I also considered forcing   "apt-get install dpkg apt debconf",
but that would have made the following number of package changes
   55 packages upgraded, 31 newly installed,
   179 to remove and 998 not upgraded
which is fewer than a full  "apt-get dist-upgrade",
   1126 packages upgraded, 213 newly installed,
   57 to remove and 40 not upgraded.
Inexplicably, the above minimal "apt-get" wanted to remove 179 packages,
while the full upgrade would only remove 57 packages.

Having to "force" an installation tool like  apt-get,
I imagined the installation would present numerous problems
as new forced packages would prevent later packages from installing
properly (eg, if perl is forced, all later packages might fail to
install).
So I chose to force a minimal number of packages through "dpkg",
hopefully limiting the number of problems,
   dpkg -i  --force-depends \
   libc6_2.2.5-11.5_i386.deb \
   libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2_1%3a2.95.4-11woody1_i386.deb \
   perl-base_5.6.1-8.3_i386.deb \
   perl-5.005-base_6.3_all.deb \
   libncurses5_5.2.20020112a-7_i386.deb \
   dpkg_1.9.21_i386.deb \
   sysvinit_2.84-2woody1_i386.deb \
   file-rc_0.6.3_all.deb \
   apt_0.5.4_i386.deb \
   debconf_1.0.32_all.deb \
   perl-modules_5.6.1-8.3_all.deb \
   binutils_2.12.90.0.1-4_i386.deb \
   libperl5.6_5.6.1-8.3_i386.deb
This failed as other packages depending on earlier versions of these
packages (eg,  perl-5.005) prevented even this forced installation.  
Further forcing with "dpkg" only revealed more problems.
In the end, I suspect none of "dselect", "apt-get", and "dpkg"
would let me upgrade this Debian installation.
If I was to do this over, again facing a failing "dselect", 
I would try working through the problems created by a forced 
"apt-get dist-upgrade".

I can always get a new Debian installation working in reasonable time.
Since my first Debian installation in 1996 
[though I first installed Linux on Slackware in 1994 and RedHat in 1995],
about a third of my Debian upgrades have taken excessive time
and presented several problems.

AFTER 5 YEARS OF DEBIAN UPGRADES ON ANY COMPUTER,
I NOW FEEL I BOTH SAVE TIME AND FRUSTRATION
BY OVERLAYING THE OPERATING SYSTEM WITH A NEW DEBIAN OPERATING SYSTEM,
SKIPPING ANY DEBIAN UPGRADES AFTER 5 YEARS.
Luckily, in Linux, a users' most important information
is easily retained from /home and /usr/local.

While I have a tape backup, I forsee this computer's upgrade
from potato to woody consuming time without success.
I send this email, expect no possibility of reboot, and will overwrite
this computer with a new sarge Debian installation.




On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 08:46:16PM -0500, Jameson C. Burt wrote:
> I am upgrading from potato to woody (in anticipation of sarge),
> having just upgraded my potato packages with the Debian potato
> archives, and with the potato security archives.
> I run dselect with the "apt" access method,
> I update the list of packages,
> and now I am in dselect's  
>"2. [S]elect"
> I make no changes/selections, merely pressing "enter".
> Dselect recommends removing or purging 1258 packages of 1459 installed 
> packages, including numerous required packages like 
>base-files
>base-passwd
>bash
>bsdutils
>debianutils
>dpkg
>fileutils
>libc6
> 
> Entering dselect's
>2. [S]elect  Request which packages you want on your system
> and immediately pressing "enter",
> or later after entering  "U" (set all to sUggested state),
> I see the following first three lines for conflict resolution,
> lines which BAFFLE ME,
>**- Req base base-files   Debian base system miscellaneous files
>**- Req base base-passwd  Debian Base System Password/Group Files
>**- Req base bash The GNU Bourne Again SHell   
> or, in verbose mode I see [excluding "Description"],
>Installed Old mark Marked for Priority Section Package
>-  -- 

Re: dselect makes me feel like an idiot

[Chema]

On Tue, 25 Nov 2003 01:36:11 -0600
tripolar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

T> I open dselect and search / for nvidia
T> 3 choices come up. i enter return a few times, get to "install" enter
T> then this comes up
T> Why are all these kde programs being removed? Am I not doing
T> something right? Thanks

Usually, if you want to install something and an already installed package (or any of 
its dependencies) has a conflict with it, they would get uninstalled to allow the new 
one.

But dselect is old, and weird, and will make feel you sorry (the idiot part is 
optional ;-).  It commonly tries to wipe half of your system to get a tiny app 
installed, at least in my Sid experience.  Now I use aptitude, which is *much* nicier. 
 Try with it.

As a side note, nvidia packages for Sid are under heavy changes right now, so its good 
to give a look to the page of the mantainer.  I got mine compiling from source.  But 
Woody deb's should be stable, as usual.

Cheers.


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Re: dselect recommends removing 1258 packages, base-files, libc6

[Paul E Condon]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2003 at 08:46:16PM -0500, Jameson C. Burt wrote:
> I am upgrading from potato to woody (in anticipation of sarge),
> having just upgraded my potato packages with the Debian potato
> archives, and with the potato security archives.
> I run dselect with the "apt" access method,
> I update the list of packages,
> and now I am in dselect's  
>"2. [S]elect"
> I make no changes/selections, merely pressing "enter".

Presumeably you edited /etc/apt/sources.list to include woody before
you ran deselect. If you did, your apt system now is aware of many
newer versions of packages than the ones that are parts of potato.


> Dselect recommends removing or purging 1258 packages of 1459 installed 
> packages, including numerous required packages like 
>base-files
>base-passwd
>bash
>bsdutils
>debianutils
>dpkg
>fileutils
>libc6
> 

These are the potato versions of the packages. They will have to be 
removed as part of the upgrade. But there is *more*. As I recall,
you can't cleanly upgrade from potato to woody in one step. You 
must first do an upgrade of at least one package that is part of the
apt/dpkg system. But, I don't remember which one. Search the list 
archives in the date range around the time when woody was transitioned
to stable.

> Entering dselect's
>2. [S]elect  Request which packages you want on your system
> and immediately pressing "enter",
> or later after entering  "U" (set all to sUggested state),
> I see the following first three lines for conflict resolution,
> lines which BAFFLE ME,
>**- Req base base-files   Debian base system miscellaneous files
>**- Req base base-passwd  Debian Base System Password/Group Files
>**- Req base bash The GNU Bourne Again SHell   
> or, in verbose mode I see [excluding "Description"],
>Installed Old mark Marked for Priority Section Package
>-  --  ---
>installed install  remove Required basebase-files  
>installed install  remove Required basebase-passwd
>installed install  remove Required basebash 
> 
> Clicking  "R" (Revert to state before this list), I see the expected,
>*** Req base  base-files   Debian base system miscellaneous files
>*** Req base  base-passwd  Debian Base System Password/Group Files
>*** Req base  bash The GNU Bourne Again SHell
> 
> Following are the first few lines when I first enter dselect's  
> "2. [S]elect",  as expected,
> q All packages q
> qqq Updated packages (newer version is available) qqq
> q Updated Required packages q
> qqq Updated Required packages in section base qqq
>  *** Req base base-files   2.2.0   3.0.2
>  *** Req base base-passwd  3.1.10  3.4.1
>  *** Req base bash 2.03-6  2.05a-11
> 
> Following are corresponding lines from  "dpkg -l",  as expected,
>ii  base-files   2.2.0   Debian base system miscellaneous files
>ii  base-passwd  3.1.10  Debian Base System Password/Group Files
>ii  bash 2.03-6  The GNU Bourne Again SHell
> 
> The Release Notes for Woody,
> http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html
> said
>"The recommended method of upgrading is to use the apt method
>with dselect"
> Can anyone clarify why "dselect" recommends obliterating required packages?
> 
> 
> Two years ago, I upgraded other computers from potato to woody
> using instead apt-get.
> Then, with  "apt-get  dist-upgrade",  I remember spending a couple 
> days fumbling through upgrade problems,
> so I presume the Release Notes correctly recommend using "dselect".
> 
> My current potato distribution has the following package versions,
>libc6  2.1.3-25
>bash   2.03-6
>perl-5.005 5.005.03-7.2
>perl-base  5.004.05-1.1
>debconf0.2.80.17 
>dpkg   1.6.15 
>libncurses55.0-6.0potato2
>libstdc++2.10  2.95.2-13.1 
> 
> I have used Debian Linux since 1995, so I'm fairly well versed as a user
> in dselect, dpkg, and apt-get, but I am in "Potato Hole"
> with these "dselect" recommendations.
> 

I think the method of upgrade recommended by the experts at the time of
woody release to stable was to use apt-get and *not* dselect. I would
find that discussion in the archives before you do any real damage. 

On the upside, I think you can remove all deletion flags
from dselect by removing the woody lines from sources.list and doing
an update. Your dselect will no longer see the newer stuff as being 
available and will revert to thinking that the potato stuff is the
latest available. If I were in your position I would do this before
I started work on following the upgrade directions that you find in
the archives. But this my be excessive caution.


> Should no one respond, I will return to using apt-get.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jameson C. Burt, NJ9L   Fairfax, Virginia, USA
> [EMAIL 

Re: dselect makes me feel like an idiot

[Alex Malinovich]

On Tue, 2003-11-25 at 01:36, tripolar wrote:
> I open dselect and search / for nvidia
> 3 choices come up. i enter return a few times, get to "install" enter
> then this comes up
> Why are all these kde programs being removed? Am I not doing something right?
> Thanks
> 
> "Reading Package Lists... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   ark kappfinder karbon kate kcalc kcharselect kchart kcoloredit kcontrol
>   kcron kdebase-bin kdebase-kio-plugins kdelibs-bin kdelibs-data kdelibs4
>   kdepasswd kdeprint kdesktop kdf kdict kedit kfind kformula kghostview
>   khelpcenter khexedit kicker kiconedit kit kivio kjots klipper kmail
>   kmenuedit knewsticker knode koffice koffice-data koffice-libs konqueror
>   konqueror-nsplugins konsole korn koshell kpackage kpager kpaint
>   kpersonalizer kpresenter kruler ksirc ksmserver ksnapshot ksplash kspread
>   ksysv ktimer ktip kugar kuser kview kwin kword libarts1 libartsc0
>   libkdenetwork2 libkonq4 lpr secpolicy
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>   cupsys-bsd devscripts drscheme fakeroot junior-programming kdebase-doc
>   libarts libncurses5-dev libreadline4-dev libruby1.8 mzscheme nvidia-glx-src
>   nvidia-kernel-common nvidia-kernel-src ruby1.8
> The following packages will be upgraded
>   libruby ruby
> 2 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 69 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 11.0MB of archives.
> After unpacking 110MB disk space will be freed.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n"

dselect has a "feature" (the usefulness of which is constantly debated)
which automatically makes some "intelligent" (see above comment) choices
for you about upgrading packages. (Similar to doing an apt-get
dist-upgrade, though I'm not sure if it's the same or not)
Unfortunately, one missing dependency can cause dselect to try and
suddenly uninstall a whole slew of important packages.

This is why for doing little things like installing one or two packages,
it's generally better to use apt-cache and apt-get. I generally only use
dselect when I want to do a system-wide upgrade. (For which I find it to
be infinitely better than an apt-get dist-upgrade due to the opportunity
to review any impending additions removals and the chance to make
changes.)

-- 
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Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY!
Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the
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Re: dselect-upgrade vs dist-upgrade

[Joerg Johannes]

Am Di, den 04.11.2003 schrieb Benedict Verheyen um 10:55:
> Hi,
> 
> when cloning a system via the dpkg --get-selection, dpkg --set-selection
> method, it's advised to do a apt-get dselect-upgrade instead of
> apt-get dist-upgrade. I do not understand why.

>From the man page (man apt-get):
   dselect-upgrade
dselect-upgrade is used  in  conjunction  with  the  traditional
Debian  packaging front-end, dselect(8). dselect-upgrade follows
the changes made by dselect(8) to the Status field of  available
packages,  and  performs  the  actions necessary to realize that
state (for instance, the removal of old and the installation  of
new packages).

   dist-upgrade
dist-upgrade, in addition to performing the function of upgrade,
also intelligently handles changing dependencies with  new  ver-
sions  of  packages;  apt-get  has a "smart" conflict resolution
system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important  pack-
ages  at  the  expense of less important ones if necessary.  The
/etc/apt/sources.list file contains a  list  of  locations  from
which  to  retrieve desired package files.  See also apt_prefer-
ences(5) for a mechanism for overriding the general settings for
individual packages.

In short: dist-upgrade looks which INSTALLED packages need to be
upgraded, including new dependencies, while dselect-upgrade looks which
packages you want to (un-)install.

> Also, if you would use aptitude, what would be the correct way
> of doing this?

Don't use aptitude. I tried it out and found it in no way more
user-friendly than dselect itself (and dselect is a real PITA to use).
Just do it on the command line, and if you need a menu-based tool, use
synaptic (it's GTK-based).

joerg

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Re: dselect conflicts

[Jon Haugsand]

* Joachim Fahnenmueller
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 10:13:51PM +0200, Jon Haugsand wrote:
> > and a new testing version of XFree 3.2.
> 
> 3.2 isn't _very_ new, is it? Did you install it as a deb package?

Yes, but from some non official looking http address.  The downloading
process gave me a lot of trouble though, as apt-get complained a lot
of double (or conflicting?) definitions in sources.lists.  I had to
disable some addresses when doing this.

> I suggest to use aptitude instead. It can e. g. show you what a given package
> depends on (press d) and which packages depend on it (r).

Thanks.  This was a lot better.

-- 
Jon Haugsand
  Dept. of Informatics, Univ. of Oslo, Norway, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
  http://www.ifi.uio.no/~jonhaug/, Phone: +47 22 95 21 52


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Re: dselect conflicts

[Joachim Fahnenmueller]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 10:13:51PM +0200, Jon Haugsand wrote:

> 
> 
> My current problem took place when I entered dselect in order to
> REALLY configure my system.  There was a LOT of conflicts.  And I
> couldn't make head or tails out of these things.
> 
> Maybe the problems manifasted themselves when I installed a new kernel

Doesn't seem likely to me because the kernel packages don't depend
on much.

> and a new testing version of XFree 3.2.

3.2 isn't _very_ new, is it? Did you install it as a deb package?

> How should I figure out thise things?

I suggest to use aptitude instead. It can e. g. show you what a given package
depends on (press d) and which packages depend on it (r).

After updating the package list, i always put all packages on hold (=) so
that nothing is changed until I want it.

You can also press g once to see what aptitude would do in this situation.
If you agree, press g again, if not, q.

If you still have problems, describe them in more detail. 

HTH
-- 
Joachim Fahnenmüller
Lehrer für Mathematik und Physik

Herder-Gymnasium
Kattowitzer Straße 52
51065 Köln


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Re: dselect, was Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?

[Alfredo Valles]

On Saturday 27 September 2003 2:18 am, Terry Hancock wrote:
> On Friday 26 September 2003 10:29 am, Pigeon wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 02:52:12AM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > > On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 08:26:32AM +1200, cr wrote:
> > > > I appreciate that dselect is only part of the install process, albeit
> > > > the largest part timewise if one uses it.
> > >
> > > You don't have to, though.
> >
> > Yeah, but what are the choices?
> >
> > Run tasksel (y/n)? (frequently too coarse)
> > Run dselect (y/n)? (we all know about this one :-) )
> > Do it by hand afterwards - somewhat inconvenient and daunting for a
> > new user
>
> Yeah, I agree that dselect is awful (to be fair, it probably wasn't so bad
> when there were fewer packages to wade through).  I have stopped
> using it, myself.
>
> I recommend using "tasksel" to rough out the system, then using apt-get
> to finish the job.  The tasksel will give you a working system with the
> basics you need that you may not know by name. Then the apt-get will allow
> you to ask for everything you specifically know you want.
>
> The downside is that it may be a little hard to find the correct package
> names by what they do or what commands they include. I have only
> just recently learned that there are ways to query this on the command
> line (but they may only work for installed packages?).  Anyway, myself,
> I make used of the "packages search" on the Debian website to make
> those determinations.
>
> Usually, you can just use apt-get to load stuff as you need it after that.
>
> And of course, once you get a collection of packages you like, you
> can use the dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections to save
> and retrieve your choices or replicate onto multiple computers.
>

Try synaptic.




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Re: dselect, was Re: OT: RH and Debian brothers now?

[Terry Hancock]

On Friday 26 September 2003 10:29 am, Pigeon wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2003 at 02:52:12AM -0700, Paul Johnson wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 27, 2003 at 08:26:32AM +1200, cr wrote:
> > > I appreciate that dselect is only part of the install process, albeit the 
> > > largest part timewise if one uses it. 
> > You don't have to, though.
> Yeah, but what are the choices?
> 
> Run tasksel (y/n)? (frequently too coarse)
> Run dselect (y/n)? (we all know about this one :-) )
> Do it by hand afterwards - somewhat inconvenient and daunting for a
> new user

Yeah, I agree that dselect is awful (to be fair, it probably wasn't so bad
when there were fewer packages to wade through).  I have stopped
using it, myself.

I recommend using "tasksel" to rough out the system, then using apt-get
to finish the job.  The tasksel will give you a working system with the basics
you need that you may not know by name. Then the apt-get will allow
you to ask for everything you specifically know you want.

The downside is that it may be a little hard to find the correct package
names by what they do or what commands they include. I have only
just recently learned that there are ways to query this on the command
line (but they may only work for installed packages?).  Anyway, myself,
I make used of the "packages search" on the Debian website to make
those determinations.

Usually, you can just use apt-get to load stuff as you need it after that.

And of course, once you get a collection of packages you like, you
can use the dpkg --get-selections and dpkg --set-selections to save
and retrieve your choices or replicate onto multiple computers.

HTH,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com


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Re: dselect insisting to install/uninstall dozends of packages

[Colin Watson]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 10:13:13PM +0200, Andreas Schildbach wrote:
> I somehow managed that dselect insists on installing or uninstalling 
> dozends of packages (which will most likely ruin my installation). I've 
> tried everything to erase the selections from dselects memory, including 
> all solutions described in the dselect introduction on debian.org.
> 
> How can I reset dselects selections to the currectly installed packages?

There's a patch in http://bugs.debian.org/151540 to make this a
single-key action. To, er, quote myself from that bug report:

  Without that, the best way I know, short of the risky procedure of
  hand-editing /var/lib/dpkg/status, is to use the ':' (unhold) command
  with the cursor on each of the "Updated packages (newer version is
  available)", "Up to date installed packages", and "Available packages
  (not currently installed)" headers. You may have to go round a few
  times to calm dselect down.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: dselect insisting to install/uninstall dozends of packages

[Jerome R. Acks]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2003 at 10:13:13PM +0200, Andreas Schildbach wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I somehow managed that dselect insists on installing or uninstalling 
> dozends of packages (which will most likely ruin my installation). I've 
> tried everything to erase the selections from dselects memory, including 
> all solutions described in the dselect introduction on debian.org.
> 
> How can I reset dselects selections to the currectly installed packages?

You could try copying /var/lib/dpkg/status to a different name and then
replace the status file with /var/lib/dpkg/status-old or with an
earlier version from the backups in /var/backups. The older the
backup, the more out of sync it will be with what you currenly have
installed, but the more likely it is to fix your problem. 

If you feel a little more adventurous, you could try editing the
status file itself and change appropriate lines to read:

Status: install ok installed

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Re: dselect apt-get coordination

[Manoj Srivastava]

On Fri, 01 Aug 2003 10:12:00 -0400, David Z Maze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: 

> You may like aptitude; it has a similar (though more familiar to me)
> user interface to dselect,

I use the following as ~/.aptitude/config, which gives me
 pretty much the look and feel of dselect with aptitude functionality.

manoj

aptitude "";
aptitude::UI "";
aptitude::UI::Package-Header-Format "%H %N %n #%B %u %o";
aptitude::UI::Package-Status-Format "%p %v %C; %A %D %I %s %P#";
aptitude::UI::Package-Display-Format "%c%a%M%R %I %15p %10v %10V %d#";
aptitude::UI::Default-Grouping 
"filter(missing),task,status,priority,section(subdir,passthrough),section(topdir)";
aptitude::UI::Advance-On-Action "true";
aptitude::UI::Description-Visible-By-Default "true";
aptitude::UI::Minibuf-Download-Bar "true";
aptitude::UI::Prompt-On-Exit "true";
aptitude::UI::Exit-On-Last-Close "true";
aptitude::UI::Incremental-Search "true";
aptitude::UI::Minibuf-Prompts "true";
aptitude::UI::Menubar-Autohide "false";
aptitude::UI::HelpBar "true";
aptitude::Pkg-Display-Limit "";
aptitude::Suggests-Important "true";
aptitude::Recommends-Important "true";
aptitude::Auto-Fix-Broken "true";
aptitude::Auto-Install "true";
aptitude::Warn-Not-Root "true";
aptitude::Forget-New-On-Install "false";
aptitude::Forget-New-On-Update "false";
aptitude::Display-Planned-Action "true";
aptitude::Changelog-URL-Template 
"http://cgi.debian.org/cgi-bin/get-changelog?package=%s";;
aptitude::AutoClean-After-Update "true";
aptitude::Auto-Upgrade "true";
aptitude::Allow-ReInstall "true";

-- 
"Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the
shit." Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban
Manoj Srivastava   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  
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Re: dselect apt-get coordination

[David Z Maze]

"DePriest, Jason R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> The /etc/apt/apt.conf files is extremely customizable. See 'man
> apt.conf' for all the details.
>
> The biggest problem I have with dselect over apt-get: it is easier to
> pick which version of a particular package I want to install when
> multiple versions are available with apt-get.

You may like aptitude; it has a similar (though more familiar to me)
user interface to dselect, but it's closer tied to APT, and is aware
that there could potentially be multiple versions of a package.  Rumor
is that it's not perfect about tracking a particular release ("I
usually run testing but I have an unstable APT source too"), but I
personally don't do this.

-- 
David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell


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RE: dselect apt-get coordination

[DePriest, Jason R.]

The /etc/apt/apt.conf files is extremely customizable. See 'man
apt.conf' for all the details.

The biggest problem I have with dselect over apt-get: it is easier to
pick which version of a particular package I want to install when
multiple versions are available with apt-get.

-Original Message-
From: R Ransbottom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 3:50 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: dselect apt-get coordination


How do you coordinate apt-get and dselect
so that they "want" the same packages?

If I understand the apt-get man page
running "apt-get dselect-upgrade" will
set up the system per the setting last
made using dselect.  Correct?

How do you the inverse?  That is how
do you alter the dselect database to
reflect packages installed with apt-get
or, put another way, to reflect the
current state of the system?
(So that a casual use of dselect does
not materially alter the system.)

Thanks.


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Re: dselect apt-get coordination

[Bruce Sass]

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, R Ransbottom wrote:

> How do you coordinate apt-get and dselect
> so that they "want" the same packages?
>
> If I understand the apt-get man page
> running "apt-get dselect-upgrade" will
> set up the system per the setting last
> made using dselect.  Correct?

yes

> How do you the inverse?  That is how
> do you alter the dselect database to
> reflect packages installed with apt-get
> or, put another way, to reflect the
> current state of the system?
> (So that a casual use of dselect does
> not materially alter the system.)

Not necessary, APT and dselect use the same DB...
/var/lib/dpkg/status

To figure out what is available dselect uses /var/lib/dpkg/available,
APT uses (iirc) /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin which is constructed from
the Packages files it downloads to /var/lib/apt/lists.

So, while APT and dselect can have different ideas about what is
available, they will always think alike with respect to what is
installed.

Doing a dselect-upgrade will cause APT to do whatever dselect has
flagged in /var/lib/dpkg/status instead of figuring out what
to download.

Loading the status file into a text editor for more info.


HTH


- Bruce


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Re: dselect

[Paul Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 09:15:03AM +0200, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Perhaps the best solution is to remove the unstable sources after
> installing the desired packages.

Actually, even better is to use an apt-aware tool like aptitude
instead of dselect, or finding backports to your version for what you
need from unstable over at apt-get.org.

- -- 
 .''`. Paul Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
: :'  :proud Debian admin and user
`. `'`
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fix a system
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Re: dselect

[Florian Ernst]

David Z Maze wrote:
> Thomas Gies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Why does dselect update packages from unstable even if I put
>>
>> APT::Default-Release "testing";
>>
>> in my apt.conf?
> 
> Because dselect isn't terribly cognizant of APT; dselect was written
> first, and doesn't really understand why one would have multiple
> available versions of the same package, so it just picks the newest
> one ("unstable").  If you're looking for a CUI dpkg frontend that
> understands more of what APT is up to, you might look at aptitude.

Hm, it works with dselect if you have pinning similar to this:

[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat /etc/apt/preferences
X-comment:  Track apt-build as primary
Package: *
Pin: release a=apt-build
Pin-Priority: 800

X-comment:  Track testing as default
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 500

X-comment:  Make unstable available
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 50


But you will only have access to one version of a package when using
dselect.
aptitude on the other hand offers access to all versions of a package.


HTH,
Flo


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Re: dselect

[thomas . gies]

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 06:41:33PM -0400, David Z Maze wrote:
> Thomas Gies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > Why does dselect update packages from unstable even if I put
> >
> > APT::Default-Release "testing";
> >
> > in my apt.conf?
> 
> Because dselect isn't terribly cognizant of APT; dselect was written
> first, and doesn't really understand why one would have multiple
> available versions of the same package, so it just picks the newest
> one ("unstable").  If you're looking for a CUI dpkg frontend that
> understands more of what APT is up to, you might look at aptitude.
> 
> -- 
> David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
> "Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
>   -- Abra Mitchell
> 
> 
> -- 
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I think I found it. When I added the unstable sources, dselect contained
two gnumerics. I accidentaly installed the version, that is only
available in unstable.

Perhaps the best solution is to remove the unstable sources after
installing the desired packages.

Thomas
-- 
Die Welt ist kunterbunt, mein Arsch wiegt 180 Pfund. - Hans Peter Gies, 1989 



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Re: dselect

[Paul Johnson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, Jul 01, 2003 at 06:23:57PM +0200, Thomas Gies wrote:
> Why does dselect update packages from unstable even if I put
> 
> APT::Default-Release "testing";
> 
> in my apt.conf?

Unstable pinned at the same or higher priority?  Pinning's kind of a
bad hack anyway, why not just pick one and go with it?

- -- 
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: :'  :proud Debian admin and user
`. `'`
  `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fix a system
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Re: dselect

[David Z Maze]

Thomas Gies <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Why does dselect update packages from unstable even if I put
>
> APT::Default-Release "testing";
>
> in my apt.conf?

Because dselect isn't terribly cognizant of APT; dselect was written
first, and doesn't really understand why one would have multiple
available versions of the same package, so it just picks the newest
one ("unstable").  If you're looking for a CUI dpkg frontend that
understands more of what APT is up to, you might look at aptitude.

-- 
David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED]  http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/
"Theoretical politics is interesting.  Politicking should be illegal."
-- Abra Mitchell


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Re: dselect issue

[Graeme Tank]

See the "unable to install libpam0g ?" thread of 6/25.

Graeme


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Re: dselect issue

[Graeme Tank]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:09:23PM -0400, Howell Evans wrote:
> problem that i have no idea how to beat. When i try and do an upgrade i 
> get these issues
> 
> E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on 
> libpam0g
> Some errors occurred while unpacking. I'm going to configure the
> packages that were installed. This may result in duplicate errors
> or errors caused by missing dependencies. This is OK, only the errors
> above this message are important. Please fix them and run [I]nstall again

What's the status of libpam0g? I run testing:
$ dpkg -l libpam0g
ii  libpam0g   0.76-9 Pluggable Authentication Modules library

Perhaps you need to reconfigure the package:
# dpkg-reconfigure libpam0g

... then [I]nstall again via dselect.

> i have no clue why it wants to remove libpam0g. I have gone into dselect 
> and told it to leave libpam0g alone, but i still get the same error. any 
> help would be amazing.

If dselect wants to remove libpam0g, perhaps there's a conflicting
dependency. If you're having trouble with dselect pinning down the
conflict, you could use apt instead, which I find friendlier.

To update the available packages:
# apt-get update

To simulate the upgrade, just to see what would happen:
# apt-get -s upgrade

If the result is satisfactory, upgrade:
# apt-get upgrade

You could also try aptitude as a package manager.

> -howell

Graeme


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Re: dselect, apt-get and unstable

[Osamu Aoki]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2003 at 09:25:56PM -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Mar 2003 19:00:38 -0800
> Osamu Aoki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > 
> > What tools you use for Debian archive access and what dependency
> > problem you encounter are orthogonal problem.  It is just an
> > impression you get when you use these tools in the default state.
> 
> "Orthogonal" seems to be a popular word lately.

Independent, not-linked, un-related, ...

> Did you mean to say that dependency problems are not related to the
> tools used to install packages, and that different tools give us
> different information about dependency problems?

You are using APT system with different user interfaces after all (You
can defy this but that is beyond normal use).

dselect, apt-get, aptitude all get affected by /etc/apt/preferences

Some options (-t) are there to provide temporary values for
/etc/apt/preferences in apt-get.  Please read manual pages for 
apt_preferences

If you set stupid combination or bad archive status, you will hit
problem with any tools.

Since newer interface tend to expose more of these underlying issues,
you become aware of the issues.

This is my super condensed picture.  I know I may not be accurate in
real details :-)
-- 
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