[NCLUG] apt-get error code

Chad Perrin perrin at apotheon.com
Mon Apr 17 02:02:22 MDT 2006


On Mon, Apr 17, 2006 at 12:54:29AM -0700, Matt Taggart wrote:
> 
> Chad Perrin writes...
> 
> > Actually, just a little while ago, I decided to try making backup copies
> > of /var/lib/dpkg/info/kdebluetooth* followed by deleting them.  I
> > figured it was worth a try.  The end result was that apt-get threw an
> > error but worked again anyway.  Thereafter, everything has been kosher.
> 
> You made the error in the script go away by making the script go away :)
> dpkg complained that it was missing, but proceeded because there was nothing 
> else it could do. Let's hope the postrm script didn't need to do anything 
> important like backup your data or something ...

It was nothing but an unneeded piece of software, so I wasn't terribly
worried about it.


> 
> > Because this was a Debian install from a Knoppix CD that defaulted to
> > including some now nonexistent repositories in sources.list, the
> > information in some of the /var/lib/dpkg/info files no longer matched
> > the reality of what was available in the repositories, and the apt
> > system wasn't able to reconcile it with the still-extant repositories.
> 
> The stuff in /var/lib/dpkg/info reflects the reality of stuff on the system, 
> having apt sources go away doesn't change that. Information about apt's view 
> of the repositories is kept in /var/cache/apt/ and is updated with `apt-get 
> update`. You should always run an `apt-get update` after changing sources, 
> before using apt-get. apt compares it's view of the repositories with dpkg's 
> view of what's currently on the system in order to determine what to install. 
> If you forgot to do an update, you'd have a stale view of the repositories and 
> when apt went to fetch the packages it wanted, it might find that they're no 
> longer available (before installing anything). If the packages are still they 
> are it will happily grab them and install them, and that should work as well 
> as it would have the day you ran the update.

See above, re: Knoppix CD as the source of the install.  It had nothing
to do with me doing regular updates.


> 
> Probably what you ran into is an untested upgrade path. In general you should 
> be able to upgrade from one Debian version to any newer Debian version of a 
> package (forward only, backward usually works but isn't supported). If you're 
> mixing in 3rd party stuff, that's less likely to be tested and harder to 
> support.

. . . which seems to support my conclusion that it had something to do
with a missing repository, since I'm pretty sure nobody tested an
upgrade path from a third-party repository to the official Debian
repositories upon the vanishment of the former.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The ability to quote is a serviceable
substitute for wit." - W. Somerset Maugham



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