LMDE Updates Message "Fix Broken Packages"

[jeffreyC]

VLC will run without libva1, if your system will run without it (mine does , so maybe yours)

[craig10x]

You said it TBABIII
Yes, this is the first breakage i have encountered since installing LMDE...I hope it will get fixed soon...

Just Curious though, anyone else who did those updates using the terminal command and it took out the old VLC media player....if you open your Gnome MPlayer (Not the regular MPLAYER..i know it's confusing with 2 applications with similar names)...does it work fine but you get this message when it opens:
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

By the way, after seeing that, i looked it the software center and see that libvdpau is installed so it isn't like it was knocked out or something...
That is why i was wondering why i am getting that message now...didn't get it prior to changes caused by these updates...

[CiaW]

Reading this thread I think I may be the only one who saw that a 'dist-upgrade' wanted to remove VLC and replace it with nothing; so I answered 'I don't think so!' and typed 'n'. I tried the dist-upgrade route after I got the MintUpdate error too. Then I came over here to see that there was a big thread about the topic, and learned a couple new things about synaptic!

Glad I installed Debian Squeeze on another partition last weekend, just in case! (to play with KDE, to see if I like it, mostly...). Have to keep an eye out for and selective about updates for a bit, it appears.

[vrkalak]

If your version of VLC was removed this this recent set of updates/upgrades . . . the SynapticManager/MintUpdate will not allow you to reinstall VLC, as dependencies have not been met.

Best to wait for the newer version of VLC, to come down the line.

Of course, there is a 'work-around' for everything . . . often more trouble than it's worth. Better to wait.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The 'official' Debian explanation:

Sometimes packages have seemingly recursive dependencies (adding X makes Y uninstallable, Y is waiting for X). This means the new version of X will break the old version of Y, but there's also a new version of Y that needs the new version of X. As soon as all other dependencies are solved, the two packages can be hinted to go in together.

[TBABill]

You said it TBABIII
Yes, this is the first breakage i have encountered since installing LMDE...I hope it will get fixed soon...

Just Curious though, anyone else who did those updates using the terminal command and it took out the old VLC media player....if you open your Gnome MPlayer (Not the regular MPLAYER..i know it's confusing with 2 applications with similar names)...does it work fine but you get this message when it opens:
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

By the way, after seeing that, i looked it the software center and see that libvdpau is installed so it isn't like it was knocked out or something...
That is why i was wondering why i am getting that message now...didn't get it prior to changes caused by these updates...

Mine opened without any error, but your error contained "nvidia" so it could be a conflict with the video driver? Mine is Intel so I am not the best test case probably.

[Spurs_Fan_21]

I upgraded testing today. Yeah I saw that it wanted to remove vlc, I didn't care I let it do its thing. Just so people know try reinstalling vlc later on when more update start coming back up.You will want to do

Code: Select all

apt-get install  vlc vlc-nox vlc-plugin-notify vlc-plugin-pulse

and that should get it all back. Until then there is a just a dependency loop.


Someone had posted earlier they weren't sure if rolling release is that great anymore because of this. Well, it's only vlc that is broken right now. Other things will break, it is not a matter of "if" but when. It is Debian testing and things will break, that is the nature of it. Now if some package in Squeeze broke then I would be shocked. LMDE might even break so bad you cannot boot up. These things happen.

[chris_debian]

From the 11 packages, I just installed one at a time and that solved the problem.

Chris.

[viking777]

Look folks, this statement is posted very clearly on linuxmint.com. in the section relating to LMDE.

4. How does LMDE compare to the Ubuntu-based editions?
Pros:

You don't need to ever re-install the system. New versions of software and updates are continuously brought to you.
It's faster and more responsive than Ubuntu-based editions.
Cons:

Although it's using Romeo for unstable packages, LMDE continuously changes as it receives updates and new software. Compared to a frozen version of Linux Mint which changes very little once it's publicly released, it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT.
Debian is a less user-friendly/desktop-ready base than Ubuntu. Expect some rough edges.

That comes straight from the developers themselves, so you have been warned as they say.

I particularly agree with zerozero's comments about using mintupdate. I have never used it as it happens, not because of this problem, but just because I think it inferior to synaptic (which is a gui incidentally not a command line) and I also think that 'levels' are unnecessary. As I don't use it I haven't seen the exact sequence of events that led to people removing a complete media player and replacing it with a single library file. But what I did see (using synaptic) is a list of all the things that were going to be removed to accommodate this new library file if I went ahead with the update as it was presented to me. It doesn't take a computer genius to realise that junking a whole media player is not a particularly good idea so I didn't do it, I am sure that if you were presented with the same information you would have made the same decision (I hope so anyway!). So if you used an update method that did not give you the full picture about the update then it is the update method that is at fault and I suggest you follow zerozero's advice and consider ditching that instead of vlc

If in the future you are presented with similar choices then just postpone the update until you have read the forum, there WILL be somebody else with the same problem. Back in August I suggested that the the Mint forum should have a separate section along the same lines as sidux used to have, an "Update Warnings" section and I still think it should, that way you don't have to search the entire forum to find what you are looking for, you just go straight to that section. It is not a bad idea for all versions of Mint but it would be particularly useful for LMDE.

[viking777]

About conf files, and this is just my opinion, it all depends: i'm not going to let Debian overwrite my sudoers file everytime sudo is updated (well i could, but it's a pain to go back and redo the conf again)

Just an idea zerozero, but how long would it take to minimize the update window, open a file manager or terminal, make a backup of the sudoers file, then carry on with the update including replacing with the maintainers version?

Not very long in my experience. The advantage of this is that the maintainers file is tested to work with the updates you are installing and therefore is unlikely to baulk the rest of the update whereas you amended file is not tested to work with the updates you are installing and therefore may cause such problems.

I will agree that the amount of amendments you can make to a sudoers file is not that likely to baulk a whole update, but the principle applies to other files as well which may have that power.

But like I said it is just an idea.

EDIT. In fact do you even have to do that? If you elect to replace a file does it do its own backup? I just noticed that I have two sudoers packages one called 'sudoers' and the other called sudoers.dpkg-old.

[gosa]

Back in August I suggested that the the Mint forum should have a separate section along the same lines as sidux used to have, an "Update Warnings" section and I still think it should, that way you don't have to search the entire forum to find what you are looking for, you just go straight to that section. It is not a bad idea for all versions of Mint but it would be particularly useful for LMDE.

+1

I like that idea.

[zerozero]

About conf files, and this is just my opinion, it all depends: i'm not going to let Debian overwrite my sudoers file everytime sudo is updated (well i could, but it's a pain to go back and redo the conf again)

Just an idea zerozero, but how long would it take to minimize the update window, open a file manager or terminal, make a backup of the sudoers file, then carry on with the update including replacing with the maintainers version?

Not very long in my experience. The advantage of this is that the maintainers file is tested to work with the updates you are installing and therefore is unlikely to baulk the rest of the update whereas you amended file is not tested to work with the updates you are installing and therefore may cause such problems.

I will agree that the amount of amendments you can make to a sudoers file is not that likely to baulk a whole update, but the principle applies to other files as well which may have that power.

But like I said it is just an idea.

EDIT. In fact do you even have to do that? If you elect to replace a file does it do its own backup? I just noticed that I have two sudoers packages one called 'sudoers' and the other called sudoers.dpkg-old.

it's a good tip, yours, and following that procedure the upgrade is "cleaner" and really to be honest even if that .old file didn't exist takes 1 min to change the original think i'm just too lazy

[zerozero]

If in the future you are presented with similar choices then just postpone the update until you have read the forum, there WILL be somebody else with the same problem. Back in August I suggested that the the Mint forum should have a separate section along the same lines as sidux used to have, an "Update Warnings" section and I still think it should, that way you don't have to search the entire forum to find what you are looking for, you just go straight to that section. It is not a bad idea for all versions of Mint but it would be particularly useful for LMDE.

+1
time is proving that this is more needed now then before

[zole052]

If in the future you are presented with similar choices then just postpone the update until you have read the forum, there WILL be somebody else with the same problem. Back in August I suggested that the the Mint forum should have a separate section along the same lines as sidux used to have, an "Update Warnings" section and I still think it should, that way you don't have to search the entire forum to find what you are looking for, you just go straight to that section. It is not a bad idea for all versions of Mint but it would be particularly useful for LMDE.

+1
time is proving that this is more needed now then before

+1

[Jaime Frontero]

Just for informational purposes - I note that VLC 1.1.7 IS available on the VLC website.

I think I'll wait until it shows up in Synaptic though...

[viking777]

Just for informational purposes - I note that VLC 1.1.7 IS available on the VLC website.

I think I'll wait until it shows up in Synaptic though...

Good choice.

If it were compatible with Debian Testing it would already be in Synaptic believe me. As I said before it will sort itself out soon enough, just be patient.

[Zleep-Dogg]

rtrev and craig10x,
i didn't try to install back vlc (actually i hold the upgrade just in case) but for what i see is not going to be possible to install it back so easily. you are going though a dependency loop: vlc depends on vlc-nox, which depends on libva1 (but the new libva1 version breaks the vlc-nox available in synaptic).

this i haven't tested but may work try to downgrade libva1 to the previous version, and lock the version for now, and then install vlc.
may work, but anyway as i said before is temporary because more updates (ffmpeg) are coming to mess with the multimedia

Actually it was quite easy to get vlc back and working... roll back libva1 (in synaptics, selct it and use menu: package-->force version), install vlc-nox, install vlc...
(vlc still gave an error about vlc-nox note being installed, but nox no longer wanted to remove a bunch of stuff including some gstreamer and ffmpeg after rolling back)...

and this is btw the last time I used the mint-updater (it was set to 1-5) - I did the updates in smaller bunches because of the "fix broken packages" and it seemed to work well... until I noticed in the log that vlc was removed without actually asking me... I figure I would just reinstall, but then vlc-nox wanted to remove a bunch of packages... finding this thread I realized that libva1 was responsible and then it was an easy fix...

[jeffreyC]

Why I would not let it replace the sudoers is because I saw on a forum where someone who did is no longer able to sudo on his system.
Which makes it difficult to edit or replace the sudoers

[NoSavvy]

Craig 10x

If you have now removed vlc etc. and want to reinstall it, I think you are stuffed, unless "libva1_1.0.1-3" is still in your /var/cache/apt/archives folder.
If it is you can reinstall this version ie. dpkg -i libva1_1.0.1-3( version name ).deb -- and then reinstall "vlc" etc through synaptic.

NS.

edit. You can download from here :- http://ftp.lipi.go.id/pub/linux/debian/ ... ibv/libva/

[craig10x]

Appreciate your help, NoSavvy...but i took off LMDE and went back to Main Edition...i thought i would prefer the rolling concept...but it seems to bring a lot of problems with it, especially now as Debian Testing is flowing again...much happier now Would rather just have a system that basically "works" and not have to deal with the tons of updates and technical problems

But again, thanks for the information and hope it works out well for you

[kmb42vt]

Experimenting around I was able to install VLC by simply adding "sid"...

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deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main

...to my sources.list just long enough to install the VLC 1.1.7. This latest version in the "sid" repos works fine without having to force "libva1" to a previous version. The new version of VLC also fixes the slow opening of the file browser when loading media files via VLC's "File/Open". The trick of course is to only install VLC and whatever dependencies it calls for and then immediately comment or remove the above line in your "sources.list" as you definitely do not want to run an upgrade or dist-upgrade with "sid" enabled.

Now I only play around like this due to LMDE being a test install so I don't mind hosing it once in awhile. If LMDE is your main OS I agree with the rest and suggest you wait until VLC 1.1.7 works it's way into Testing.