broken packages?

[tosh124]

Hello,
I have been installing Debian for a while now on several machines, and one common theme is that it will not update because of broken packages, does anyone know why a clean, vanilla install produces the problem?

I would also appreciate an easy way of fixing the packages because the package manager doesn't work..

TIA
Col

[xenopeek]

You may try:

sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

[tosh124]

You may try:

sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Thanks Vincent, but the last time I did that it installed Mint 11, which crashed the machine so I am trying to avoid it.

Any other suggestions?
thanks

[zerozero]

Thanks Vincent, but the last time I did that it installed Mint 11, which crashed the machine so I am trying to avoid it.

this is impossible
no update/upgrade process in LMDE will jump you to Mint11
can you post the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -r

within your Mint Debian install, please

[viking777]

Thanks Vincent, but the last time I did that it installed Mint 11, which crashed the machine so I am trying to avoid it.

Any other suggestions?
thanks

Now that is a real lulu that is A while ago I would have said it was impossible, but I have not one but two Mint 11 live dvd's from completely different sources that boot straight into Ubuntu 10.10 every single time without fail, and I would have said that was impossible too, but I know it isn't. Now you have an LMDE sources.list that installs Mint 11 - ain't life strange I would love to find a way to put them both together and see what we come up with

On a more serious note, just try the first of Vincent's commands instead of both of them - at least see what it says it will do, that can't do any harm.

[tosh124]

this is impossible
no update/upgrade process in LMDE will jump you to Mint11
can you post the output of

Code: Select all

inxi -r

within your Mint Debian install, please

Last time I copied the code across which was very similar to the code posted and it did indeed upgrade to Mint 11, and then within 2 days the machine wouldnt boot...

It could slightly different code, but it does look the same.

The output is

Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free


thanks

[tosh124]

Now that is a real lulu that is A while ago I would have said it was impossible, but I have not one but two Mint 11 live dvd's from completely different sources that boot straight into Ubuntu 10.10 every single time without fail, and I would have said that was impossible too, but I know it isn't. Now you have an LMDE sources.list that installs Mint 11 - ain't life strange I would love to find a way to put them both together and see what we come up with

On a more serious note, just try the first of Vincent's commands instead of both of them - at least see what it says it will do, that can't do any harm.

The wife always says I'm strange Next time I'll check the coding word for word before posting assumptions on something that looks extremely similar lol

The output is
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 994 not upgraded.

[viking777]

Now that is a real lulu that is A while ago I would have said it was impossible, but I have not one but two Mint 11 live dvd's from completely different sources that boot straight into Ubuntu 10.10 every single time without fail, and I would have said that was impossible too, but I know it isn't. Now you have an LMDE sources.list that installs Mint 11 - ain't life strange I would love to find a way to put them both together and see what we come up with

On a more serious note, just try the first of Vincent's commands instead of both of them - at least see what it says it will do, that can't do any harm.

The wife always says I'm strange Next time I'll check the coding word for word before posting assumptions on something that looks extremely similar lol

The output is
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 994 not upgraded.

tosh, if you are tracking testing but you have nearly 1000 upgrades waiting for you on a new install I think you must be using the old install disk. Are you aware there is a newer version out here: http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/testing (linuxmint-201108-gnome). I know that is a release candidate, but it is quite stable (in fact I think it is due for release imminently) If you install with this I am sure you will not have 1000 upgrades waiting for you and you might get on a bit better. The default install doesn't track debian testing by default but you can easily alter that.

EDIT. If you really want to install your 1000 upgrades have a go with

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get clean

then try again.

[tosh124]

tosh, if you are tracking testing but you have nearly 1000 upgrades waiting for you on a new install I think you must be using the old install disk. Are you aware there is a newer version out here: http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/testing (linuxmint-201108-gnome). I know that is a release candidate, but it is quite stable (in fact I think it is due for release imminently) If you install with this I am sure you will not have 1000 upgrades waiting for you and you might get on a bit better. The default install doesn't track debian testing by default but you can easily alter that.

EDIT. If you really want to install your 1000 upgrades have a go with

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get clean

then try again.

It is an old install disk, but it did prove stable, well up to the hard drive failing . I might leave it a week or two as I'm close to my download limit (again) and then do a clean install and see how it goes.
Thanks for the advice everyone.

[zerozero]

hi tosh124, i see that viking already gave you all the good advises possible, if you have an install with near 1000 pkgs to update you should either update them (what at this moment is a almost impossible task - and if you need further support in this, we are here to give it to you, but without any waranty of success) or install the new 201108 respin;

but i'm posting here mostly because of

but the last time I did that it installed Mint 11

because i think i know what's the reason:
1- now your install looks more or less like this


2- when you ran the apt-get upgrade or the apt-get dist-upgrade, your desktop went like this


3- and this is Mint11 katya

similar to n2, but notice the 11 instead of the debian symbol in n2

so, n1 and n2 are the same, just the latest with a new artwork and updated, and n3 is completely different from the others.

if this is not even close to what happened with you, i'm sorry, but was an attempt to explain it

[tosh124]

hi tosh124, i see that viking already gave you all the good advises possible, if you have an install with near 1000 pkgs to update you should either update them (what at this moment is a almost impossible task - and if you need further support in this, we are here to give it to you, but without any waranty of success) or install the new 201108 respin;

but i'm posting here mostly because of

but the last time I did that it installed Mint 11

because i think i know what's the reason:
1- now your install looks more or less like this


2- when you ran the apt-get upgrade or the apt-get dist-upgrade, your desktop went like this


3- and this is Mint11 katya

similar to n2, but notice the 11 instead of the debian symbol in n2

so, n1 and n2 are the same, just the latest with a new artwork and updated, and n3 is completely different from the others.

if this is not even close to what happened with you, i'm sorry, but was an attempt to explain it

Thats absolutely spot on, thank you! So does that mean I'm not losing my marbles then?
In which case as I said to Viking I will need to wait until my next months llocated bandwidth before I download again, assuming of course my h/d lasts that long as the replacement drive is now reading bad sectors at boot <sigh>
Thanks again for the explanation.