[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
More information about the NCLUG
mailing list