Re: applications missing after dist-upgrade

2014-09-18 Thread Joe
On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 15:03:27 -0700
tom arnall kloro2...@gmail.com wrote:

 I recently did a dist-upgrade and found afterwards that a lot of
 applications were missing:
 
 open office
 smplayer
 skype
 calibre
 poppler text utilities
 
 And about half a dozen more. And this was after only a few days use of
 the new system, i.e., i fear there may be other missing children.
 
 Is this normal?

You don't say which distribution this is, but it's either testing or
unstable. This doesn't happen in stable, but it's fairly regular in
unstable. I don't use testing, but I'd have thought this kind of
thing was unusual there, as this sort of serious disturbance should
be fixed in unstable.

What happens is usually that part of a large sub-system, (Gnome, KDE,
Qt, Python etc.) has been upgraded, but not all of it. Because an old
part is incompatible with some of the new stuff, it has been removed,
along with anything that is dependent on it.

 
 Is there anything i can do to avoid the problem next time I do an
 upgrade?
 
 
Yes. Don't use dist-upgrade straight away (Synaptic does so by default
if not configured otherwise) but use upgrade (full-upgrade/safe-upgrade
with aptitude). This will never remove packages, only the old versions
of upgraded ones. Then, if there are any remaining upgrades, use
dist-upgrade but look to see what will be removed.

If you don't like what it's telling you, don't do it, try again the
next day. This kind of problem is usually resolved in a day or two, as
the rest of the sub-system is finished and uploaded to the repositories.
You might even try again after an hour or so, as you might have been
unlucky enough to try upgrading while a complete and consistent
sub-system upload to your mirror was in progress.

If you use Synaptic in its default state, it will offer the
dist-upgrade. Deselect the 'upgrade' selections, and put back a few
individually. At each step, Synaptic will tell you what it wants to
remove, so you can backtrack and end up with only the upgrades that
don't remove anything else. You can do this with aptitude in
interactive mode, but I find Synaptic quicker. Sometimes the problem
package is obvious from the list of things to be removed.

I generally use aptitude safe-upgrade, then full-upgrade, and if there
are any problems which I don't want to wait to have fixed, switch to
Synaptic. A couple of times, the iterative procedure with Synaptic has
allowed all upgrades to be completed, when there was a correct order
for upgrading some things and aptitude hadn't found it.

Occasionally, something gets removed permanently from unstable, and
will never be in any future stable. You can keep the old version,
sometimes forever, but it will never be upgraded. In this case, you
should find an alternative.

-- 
Joe


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Re: applications missing after dist-upgrade

2014-09-18 Thread Martin Read

On 18/09/14 09:16, Joe wrote:

You don't say which distribution this is, but it's either testing or
unstable. This doesn't happen in stable, but it's fairly regular in
unstable. I don't use testing, but I'd have thought this kind of
thing was unusual there, as this sort of serious disturbance should
be fixed in unstable.


unstable is allowed to contain packages with RC (release-critical) bugs. 
testing isn't. This can cause trouble when something on which a lot of 
other packages depend in a version-sensitive way is found to have an RC bug.



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Re: applications missing after dist-upgrade

2014-09-18 Thread John Hasler
Martin Read writes:
 unstable is allowed to contain packages with RC (release-critical)
 bugs. testing isn't.

More accurately, packages can be uploaded to Unstable without regard to
dependencies.
-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA


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applications missing after dist-upgrade

2014-09-17 Thread tom arnall
I recently did a dist-upgrade and found afterwards that a lot of
applications were missing:

open office
smplayer
skype
calibre
poppler text utilities

And about half a dozen more. And this was after only a few days use of
the new system, i.e., i fear there may be other missing children.

Is this normal?

Is there anything i can do to avoid the problem next time I do an upgrade?


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Re: applications missing after dist-upgrade

2014-09-17 Thread Paul van der Vlis
op 18-09-14 00:03, tom arnall schreef:
 I recently did a dist-upgrade and found afterwards that a lot of
 applications were missing:
 
 open office
 smplayer
 skype
 calibre
 poppler text utilities
 
 And about half a dozen more. And this was after only a few days use of
 the new system, i.e., i fear there may be other missing children.
 
 Is this normal?

No.

 Is there anything i can do to avoid the problem next time I do an upgrade?

Did you use repositories other then debian.org repositories for your
Debian version?

What programm did you use for the upgrade?  My advise: use apt-get.

Is this Debian stable?

While doing an upgrade, you will see a list with packages what are
upgraded or removed. Read it, and stop when you see strange things
happening.

With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.



-- 
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen
http://www.vandervlis.nl


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