Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
Rick Macdonald wrote: George Bonser wrote: On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Rick Macdonald wrote: This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always been afraid to do that. Yes, you can do that. Just make sure you go in the order of most stable to least stable. In other words, define stable first then unstable. So what does it look like in dselect? Right now, with stable, contrib, non-free and non-US, I see, for example: --- available packages in section net --- --- available packages in section non-free/net --- --- available packages in section non-US/net --- --- available packages in section contrib/net --- Does it merge stable and unstable and just show the newest version of each package, or keep them separate so I can choose? When using *apt*, it will merge all the info from all the sources you specify in /etc/apt/sources.list. It will pick the latest versions and remove duplicates automatically (then pass the list to dselect for display), so I don't believe users can control this process. Its a good idea though, because I've often wanted to know whether the package I'm looking at in dselect's display is from stable, or unstable. -- Ed C.
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
On Thu, Mar 04, 1999 at 06:21:39PM -0800, George Bonser wrote: You can not do it in dselect. Just ftp the package to your system and use dpkg like this: dpkg --install --force-downgrade package.deb I just do this: dpkg --install package.deb It gives a warning about downgrading to a previous package, but it works. I have never needed to use the --force-downgrade option. -- Pedro Guerreiro (aka digito)([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Diplomacy: the art of letting someone have your own way.
forcing dselect to downgrade
I have been experiencing some problems due to my carelessly mixing releases. In order to fix the problem I would like to bring my system back to a state where only Stable components from my Debian 2.0 cd are on it, so that everything works correctly. And I can move forward from there if I choose. Dselect, will not normally replace a newer version with an old one. How do I override this?
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
On Thu, Mar 04, 1999 at 09:17:52PM -0500, Tommy wrote: I have been experiencing some problems due to my carelessly mixing releases. In order to fix the problem I would like to bring my system back to a state where only Stable components from my Debian 2.0 cd are on it, so that everything works correctly. And I can move forward from there if I choose. Dselect, will not normally replace a newer version with an old one. How do I override this? -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null You don't. Downgrading packages has undefined results. A better option would be to tell the list about your problems and we'll help you fix them -- Stephen Pitts [EMAIL PROTECTED] webmaster - http://www.mschess.org
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
Stephen Pitts wrote: You don't. Downgrading packages has undefined results. A better option would be to tell the list about your problems and we'll help you fix them -- Currently dselect marks 90% of the package on my system as broken. And there are a lot of them. I tried switching to exim from smail, just to try it. I have constant error messages. Several aps/ games like quake no longer run when not in X and I can not seem to find the requested libraries or get them installed. Fetchmail does not work Most things on the box seem to work fine, but the whole thing seems a little whacked In the hope that my errors will not be repeated by other I will endure the embarrassment of explaining how this happened. My system was running fine off the packages is on my Debian 2.0 cdrom. I decided to upgrade some of the packages via ftp. When I upgraded the package lists of stable, unstable, contrib, and non-free dselect presumed that I wanted to upgrade everything on my system. That everything I had previously installed that had a newer package available was selected for install and included in the download list. This created a serious problem for me because I need the packaging system to warn me about dependencies. If I cancel the download and try to install individual packages via dpkg the required packages will already be marked as selected and no dependency warnings will be given. I tried getting part of the list of aps I wanted to upgrade, but got a ton of error messages for the reasons just cited. Not knowing what else to do I decided to get everything that had been selected. I must say I'm kind of ashamed of this since I really do know better than to hog an ftp site like that, but I really did not know what else to do. Needless to say lots of errors occur when you try to ftp hundreds of mgs of files. Now dselect say 90% of my packages are broken. Far to many to fix one at a time using dpkg. I feel as if I have lost control of my system. I would like to get control back. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank You
dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
Tommy wrote: When I upgraded the package lists of stable, unstable, contrib, and non-free dselect ... This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always been afraid to do that. -- ...RickM...
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
On Thu, Mar 04, 1999 at 10:42:23PM -0500, Tommy wrote: Stephen Pitts wrote: You don't. Downgrading packages has undefined results. A better option would be to tell the list about your problems and we'll help you fix them -- Currently dselect marks 90% of the package on my system as broken. And there are a lot of them. I tried switching to exim from smail, just to try it. I have constant error messages. Several aps/ games like quake no longer run when not in X and I can not seem to find the requested libraries or get them installed. Fetchmail does not work Most things on the box seem to work fine, but the whole thing seems a little whacked In the hope that my errors will not be repeated by other I will endure the embarrassment of explaining how this happened. My system was running fine off the packages is on my Debian 2.0 cdrom. I decided to upgrade some of the packages via ftp. When I upgraded the package lists of stable, unstable, contrib, and non-free dselect presumed that I wanted to upgrade everything on my system. That everything I had previously installed that had a newer package available was selected for install and included in the download list. This created a serious problem for me because I need the packaging system to warn me about dependencies. If I cancel the download and try to install individual packages via dpkg the required packages will already be marked as selected and no dependency warnings will be given. I tried getting part of the list of aps I wanted to upgrade, but got a ton of error messages for the reasons just cited. Not knowing what else to do I decided to get everything that had been selected. I must say I'm kind of ashamed of this since I really do know better than to hog an ftp site like that, but I really did not know what else to do. Needless to say lots of errors occur when you try to ftp hundreds of mgs of files. Now dselect say 90% of my packages are broken. Far to many to fix one at a time using dpkg. I feel as if I have lost control of my system. I would like to get control back. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank You -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null First off, don't be embarrassed. While trying to nuke a RedHat parition two months ago, I also nuked 700 MB of DATA on a Win98 partition that was mounted. We all screw up sometimes. Here's my advice: Download and install APT, manually if needed, from ftp.debian.org . On my system, it only requires libc6 and libstdc++2.9. I'm pretty sure you've got those. Once that is done, setup your /etc/apt/sources.list. Mine (using ftp.debian.org, the GA TECH mirror) is: deb ftp://ftp.debian.org unstable main contrib non-free Once you've done that, run apt-get -m -f install. That tells APT to grab whatever is needed to fix your system. Don't worry about consuming network bandwidth. You'll only have to do this once. At most, it should take 4 hours on a 28.8 modem. -- Stephen Pitts [EMAIL PROTECTED] webmaster - http://www.mschess.org
Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
On Thu, Mar 04, 1999 at 08:01:43PM -0800, George Bonser wrote: On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Rick Macdonald wrote: This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always been afraid to do that. Yes, you can do that. Just make sure you go in the order of most stable to least stable. In other words, define stable first then unstable. What do you mean by define them? In /etc/apt/sources.list? (assuming I use apt) -- Jim Foltz [EMAIL PROTECTED] ACORN techie http://www.acorn.net AOL/IM Jim Foltz
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
I have been following your thread you have my sympathy. I'm too ignorant to have any ideas or suggestions. Your problems sound like mine except on a bigger scale. The Debian people keep claiming that dpkg dselect are so great but in my experience they are at best medium in practice. They admit that the interface is not the best but that the basic workingness is very good. And they do seem to be a good place to start from to write something that does work well. And the documentation! Enough said. At 3/4/99 08:42 PM , you wrote: Stephen Pitts wrote: You don't. Downgrading packages has undefined results. A better option would be to tell the list about your problems and we'll help you fix them -- Currently dselect marks 90% of the package on my system as broken. And there are a lot of them. I tried switching to exim from smail, just to try it. I have constant error messages. Several aps/ games like quake no longer run when not in X and I can not seem to find the requested libraries or get them installed. Fetchmail does not work Most things on the box seem to work fine, but the whole thing seems a little whacked In the hope that my errors will not be repeated by other I will endure the embarrassment of explaining how this happened. My system was running fine off the packages is on my Debian 2.0 cdrom. I decided to upgrade some of the packages via ftp. When I upgraded the package lists of stable, unstable, contrib, and non-free dselect presumed that I wanted to upgrade everything on my system. That everything I had previously installed that had a newer package available was selected for install and included in the download list. This created a serious problem for me because I need the packaging system to warn me about dependencies. If I cancel the download and try to install individual packages via dpkg the required packages will already be marked as selected and no dependency warnings will be given. I tried getting part of the list of aps I wanted to upgrade, but got a ton of error messages for the reasons just cited. Not knowing what else to do I decided to get everything that had been selected. I must say I'm kind of ashamed of this since I really do know better than to hog an ftp site like that, but I really did not know what else to do. Needless to say lots of errors occur when you try to ftp hundreds of mgs of files. Now dselect say 90% of my packages are broken. Far to many to fix one at a time using dpkg. I feel as if I have lost control of my system. I would like to get control back. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank You
Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
George Bonser wrote: On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Rick Macdonald wrote: This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always been afraid to do that. Yes, you can do that. Just make sure you go in the order of most stable to least stable. In other words, define stable first then unstable. So what does it look like in dselect? Right now, with stable, contrib, non-free and non-US, I see, for example: --- available packages in section net --- --- available packages in section non-free/net --- --- available packages in section non-US/net --- --- available packages in section contrib/net --- Does it merge stable and unstable and just show the newest version of each package, or keep them separate so I can choose? -- ...RickM...
Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
George Bonser wrote: On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Rick Macdonald wrote: Does it merge stable and unstable and just show the newest version of each package, Yes. or keep them separate so I can choose? No Hmmm, that doesn't seem much different than if you just define unstable, except for packages that are only in one or the other. The intersection of stable and unstable would just be the same as unstable anyway. Right? -- ...RickM...
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
Marshall Savage wrote: I have been following your thread you have my sympathy. I'm too ignorant to have any ideas or suggestions. Your problems sound like mine except on a bigger scale. The Debian people keep claiming that dpkg dselect are so great but in my experience they are at best medium in practice. They admit that the interface is not the best but that the basic workingness is very good. And they do seem to be a good place to start from to write something that does work well. And the documentation! Enough said. Actually I think dselect is pretty good. It was just designed for when Gnu/Debian was much smaller and had much fewer applications. In my case it probably should not have assumed that I wanted to upgrade everything, but not doing that could create different kinds of problems It is very difficult to write an installation / administration interface that helps the beginner / novice run a stable system, but at the same time not take away the power and control that more advanced users want and need. And when you consider that ideally people are going to progress step by step from beginner to expert the difficulty of writing such a usable interface seems quite great. There are just some really fundamental problems when beginners are system administrators. Tom
Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
George Bonser wrote: On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Rick Macdonald wrote: Hmmm, that doesn't seem much different than if you just define unstable, except for packages that are only in one or the other. The intersection of stable and unstable would just be the same as unstable anyway. Right? For the most part, correct. One last clarification. You stressed that one should tell dselect (apt) about stable first, then unstable. Does this indicate that in fact dselect doesn't always present the _newest_ version, it presents the last occurrence found? -- ...RickM...
Re: forcing dselect to downgrade
Stephen Pitts wrote: On Thu, Mar 04, 1999 at 09:17:52PM -0500, Tommy wrote: I have been experiencing some problems due to my carelessly mixing releases. In order to fix the problem I would like to bring my system back to a state where only Stable components from my Debian 2.0 cd are on it, so that everything works correctly. And I can move forward from there if I choose. Dselect, will not normally replace a newer version with an old one. How do I override this? -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null You don't. Downgrading packages has undefined results. A better option would be to tell the list about your problems and we'll help you fix them I agree with stephen about using apt, but, for the record, I should point out that dpkg can be told to downgrade a package with '--force-downgrade'. -- Ed C.
Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]
Rick Macdonald wrote: Tommy wrote: When I upgraded the package lists of stable, unstable, contrib, and non-free dselect ... This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always been afraid to do that. I'm doing that now and have been for awhile. :-) I had apt setup to get hamm+slink (when slink was unstable), and then went to slink+potato (slink is frozen and potato is unstable). The only advantage is getting access to the latest versions of software, but that advantage comes with a price. Because often unstable really *is* unstable, and you can end up after an upgrade with a badly broken system, or at least a very confused one. This can occur because at any one time, unstable could be completely broken by, for example, a new package that has been uploaded that turns out to have a bug which interferes with other packages. In addition, I went through a problem recently with GNOME. 2 weeks or so ago, an upgrade mysteriously broke GNOME. I know nothing about the inner workings of GNOME, so I ended up living with the problem until a few days ago when another upgrade mysteriously fixed the problem. I agree it is dangerous; you have to decide for yourself whether the access to the latest stuff is worth the trouble of having to deal with sometimes bizarre problems that will occasionally occur. -- Ed C.
