aptitude -f install installs unnecessary packages?

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pythonscript

aptitude -f install installs unnecessary packages?

Post by pythonscript »

When I run

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sudo aptitude -f install
Debian presents me with this list of packages:

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dhcp3-common gir1.2-gtk-2.0 gnome-session-canberra libavcodec53 
  libclutter-gtk-0.10-0 libgail-gnome-module libgconfmm-2.6-1c2 libgcr0 
  libglademm-2.4-1c2a libgnome-keyring1.0-cil libgnome-speech7 libgsf-1-114 
  libgsf-1-common libiptcdata0 liblockfile1 libmjpegtools-2.0-0 
  libnfsidmap2 libntfs10 liboil0.3 libopenal1 libquicktime2 libssl0.9.8 
  libswscale2 libvo-aacenc0 libvo-amrwbenc0 libxcb-dri2-0 
  libxcb-render-util0 libxml-parser-ruby1.8 
However, running sudo deborphan presents me with this list:

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libgnome-speech7
libxml-parser-ruby1.8
libssl0.9.8
libxcb-render-util0
libgcr0
liboil0.3
libgsf-1-114
gnome-session-canberra
libxcb-dri2-0
libgnome-keyring1.0-cil
libclutter-gtk-0.10-0
libmjpegtools-2.0-0
libopenal1
libntfs10
libglademm-2.4-1c2a
libiptcdata0
libnfsidmap2
libgconfmm-2.6-1c2
libgail-gnome-module
gir1.2-gtk-2.0
dhcp3-common
liblockfile1
Why does aptitude say that these packages are necessary, but deborphan says that nothing depends on them? I'm trying to get my system as "clean" as possible, but if I purge the list of packages that deborphan gives me, aptitude -f install simply asks to reinstall them.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
viking777

Re: aptitude -f install installs unnecessary packages?

Post by viking777 »

Do you run apt-get or synaptic as well as aptitude?

The general feeling is that you shouldn't mix the two managers because they do not deal with problems in the same way. In particular if you have been using apt-get (or something that uses it) then you switch to aptitude then the latter will not correctly identify packages that are dependencies installed by the former and will try to remove them. Therefore if you do use both of them you should always run the command

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sudo aptitude keep-all
before any other aptitude command.

If you do that you will get a very different result to your 'install' command.
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