[oclug] Debian updating (Was: Good Point)

[Jonathan Earle]

Hi folks,

I've been trying to get my Debian system (the one I haven't wanted to fire
up in months. :) ) up and running and updated.  I've been playing with the
unstable branch as I'd rather have the latest and greatest vs server class
reliability on my home machine.

Recalling that the last time I did something like this (after a time of not
updating) caused me huge amounts of grief, I avoided dselect and instead ran
"apt-get update" to update the lists of packages.  Only complaint was for
the non-US stuff.  Fixed that, and no more complaints when I reran it.
(BTW, I'm including the ca.debian.org, helixgnome and non-us sites in my
sources.list.)  So, I was doing other things while the packages updated (I'm
on dialup), and fell asleep at the console.  I ended up running "apt-get
upgrade" the next day, at which point it told me that some of the packages
it tried to d/l didn't exist.  After it was done all that, I updated and
reran the upgrade.  Hmmm, that's odd, Gnome was not updated, neither was
Netscape, and those were only the two most obvious ones.  Okay, man apt-get
says the upgrade option is very careful... looks like I should use
dist-upgrade instead.  So, I use that instead.  It downloads about 140mb of
packages, but says it's holding back a few things like communicator.  Hmm..
odd.  When it finishes, it complained about a few packages not exisiting, so
apt-get update again and try the dist-upgrade once more.  Whoa!  Now, it
tells me that it wants to _remove_ about 90 odd packages, including minor
ones like GCC and G++ and the window managers and a whole host of others
that it just installed!  Back out of that, try dselect now.  After
satisfying it's dependency requirements, try to install and the same thing
happens!

I now remember why I didn't want to fire up this box. :)  I think Debian
hates me.

What have I done wrong now?  How can I get it to a sane state again where I
can use apt-get or dselect without the tools wanting to trash my system?

Cheers!
Jon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael H. Collins [mailto:mhtexcollins at austin.rr.com]
> 
> Not just Debian.  I use it with an rpm based system.  
> Conectiva is its 
> name.  Just did it today and it upgraded my ssh stuff.
> 
> http://en.conectiva.com/
> 
> bbarnett at l8r.net wrote:
> > 
> > Erm, its called "debian" and apt-get.  Want to do a weekly 
> upgrade?  Type
> > 
> > "apt-get update"