debian held broken package
 

Hi all,

My "problem" is that I cannot install the MATE desktop. I had previously successfully installed it on Ububtu 12.04 and Debian 7.4.somethng-or-other. These gave me problems in other areas, though 7.4.Whatever-it-was did give me most of what I wanted. Now I've installed debian 7.5. Everything else is fine, but I get an error in Synaptic when I try to install MATE:
I've looked at a number of different posts in this and other forums, however, they all seem to be about mixing "test" and "stable" repositories. That is definitely not what I'm doing. Here are the contents of my /etc/apt/sources.list:
Using Synaptic to try to fix the problem gave me the error quoted above. So how can I fix this? One post that I read suggested "dpkg -l" to find the package that was "held" but the output was... well... daunting to say the least. In the masses of information produced, the following line drew my attention:
Can I just remove that package and start again? After all the fiddling about, I am reluctant to just "try" something and hope that it works. Is this package really required for the MATE desktop? I'm thinking maybe I should do without it.

Any thoughts or hints would be welcome.

Cheers
Achim

P.S. Yes, I have tried "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get install -f" (suggested in a number of other posts). It achieved precisely nothing, nichts, nada.

Please post all the output you can so we can see exactly what is going on.
Just as an aside MATE is now in Debian's official repository for Sid and Jessie and is being backported into Wheezy. In the next couple of months you will be able to run MATE natively (meaning no 3rd party repository) in Wheezy.

Your sources.list is a little messy. Instead of this
I would have this

The only other output I can supply is that which I get from the combination "apt-get update" and "apt-get install -f".

I confess I am not that skilled in the use of aptitude. Until recently I only used Synaptic to manage packages. I guess it's time to learn, eh?

As for the state of my sources.list, well, I tend to leave 'em how I find 'em. The three lines at the bottom are my doing. The rest was that way from the start. :-)

you know synaptic has a "fix broken packages" menu entry?
not sure if that's what you meant anyway.

Please post it all.

if you are talking about the command line it is a good idea to learn it but it is not a necessity.

The big problem with your sources.list is you must always have the install cd/dvd available. If you don't you may find you have problems like the one you are having now. I would suggest you tidy it up and run apt-get update after you tidy it up and let us know what happens. My guess is MATE requires a package from Debian that Debian can't supply because your sources.list is pointing to 1 cd/dvd and not the full main section of the repository and that is why it can't resolve dependencies.

Comment out this entry
making it

If he does that without other adjustments he'll have no main at all.

Thank you for the feedback, people.

I will work my way through the suggestions in the next day or so and post again after that.

My problem... one of my problems is that I have 1 or 2 hours in the evenings (at best) to work on this stuff. To add to the difficulties, except on weekends, I only have the mobile connection through my UMTS modem. I have just gone over my limit for this month and have now been throttled down to speeds comparable with a 56K modem, if that. Downloading is really slow at the moment.

Incidentally, I have "tidied up" the sources.list, so that it no longer points to the CD. I really had'nt noticed it before... only goes to show that you can look without seeing! Sadly this tidying up has had no appreciable effect.

However, I will look closely at all the sugesstions people have given and try a few things out.

Thanks again to all who have contributed. I'll keep you posted, as it were.

Have you added this line as stated by k3lt01?

Fix your broken system before adding 3rd party repos.

Edit your sources as follows:
Then
If you encounter problems post the full outputs.

The broken system will probably because of the addition of the 3rd party repo and the lack of a full Debian main.

Updates installed
 

It's public holiday over here. As a result I have a bit more time than usual to try to sort this stuff out.

OK, first some replies:
EDDY1: I hadn't added the line "deb http://http.debian.net/debian wheezy main contrib non-free" but I have now.
k3lt01: Thanks for the advice in the first place and my apologies for not taking better note of what you suggested.
cynwulf: Your suggestion has been noted. It would mean taking a few steps back, but maybe that's the best way to go. If nothing else works I'll give the upgrade a go.

What I have done to date is:
1. Contrary to the advice given so far, I added yet another repository for Shrew Soft VPN Client. Yeah... bad boy and all that, but the VPN client works fine and doesn't cause problems. Besides, I need it for my work.
2. I did a kernel upgrade to 3.12 and tried again to fix the broken packages. I'm wondering what held packages actually are? Why are they being held? What is holding them and why can't they be fixed or replaced? Out of scope for this forum, I know, but it's something I'll have to look into if I'm gonna understand this stuff.
3. Having been spoiled by Ubuntu for the past 7 years, I hadn't done an update (Ubuntu prompts you... sometimes too often). So I did an update using the system tool which updated forty-something packages, removed some more, and listed a number of "blocked updates" at the end. Something else to look into. One thing I noted with interest is that I now have a 3.14 kernel as well. Guess I'll try booting into that next time I restart. I'll hang on to the old ones, though incase I have problems down the track.

The blocked packages included GNU flashplayer packages, Network mapper, and some Samba packages.
In each case the details showed the following message:
I'm not sure how significant this is and I really don't want to be distracted from the task at hand. I'll get back to this stuff, later.

Next steps:
1. Make a backup of the applications stuff I'm working on, as well as the intalled software (Java, JBoss, etc).
2. Restart & hold breath.
3. Try to fix broken packages... I will use the suggestions made above.
4. If the preceding steps don't achieve the desired result, then I'll the upgrade cynwulf has suggested (with appropriate sources.list.

I will post detailed results when I've done all that.

Thanks again for all the help to date, people.

Packages can be held for many reasons. The user (you) can do it (not the case here), or the package manager will hold a package because it believes that the package will break your system, make it unstable, conflicts with another installed package, etc.

Debian will do this as well if the repositories are set up properly.

It's always a good idea to make sure a new kernel works before removing the old, you'll be ok there. :)

The reason cynwulf told you to dist-upgrade is that a normal upgrade will not install or remove additional packages, just upgrade what you have installed. Therefore, by running apt-get dist-upgrade, any packages that may need to be installed to satisfy dependencies will be. In fact, some of your packages that are being held back are likely being held back because of missing dependencies.

From the apt-get man page:

My own fault...
 

Seems I clicked a tick too soon. I had prepared a detailed report of what I did with all the outputs and everything. I intended to post that before logging out and back in. Well, I finished typing it all, checked a couple of settings, and then clicked "log out". The dumb part is that I didn't submit the post first! What an idiot!

Short version: Broken packages problem solved.

OK here's a summary of what I did. Firstly, a listing of what my /etc/apt/sources.list looks like:
Steps taken:

• Backup. Only the personal & work stuff, of course.
• Entered "apt-get update". No untoward messages.
• Entered "apt-get install -f". This gave a message suggesting there was nothing to be done. However, it also listed a vast array of "automatically installed" packages which were "no longer required". It also suggested the next command.
• Entered "apt-get autoremove" (I think). I may have the command syntax wrong, but it was something like that. The previously listed packages were removed with no really drastic side effects.
• Used synaptic to successfully install MATE desktop. No errors, just a message stating "All packages successfully installed."

It's a real pain, that I've lost all those listings. It showed some interesing stuff, like the fact that Libre Office was amongst the packages which were autoremoved. I'm now faced with a difficult decision: do I re-install Libre Office or do I replace it with Open Office? I use Open Office at a customer site under Windows and I'm pretty happy with it (beats the pants off MS Office for usability). Die Qual der Wahl!! If only all my problems were like that.

Yep. I do still have a few areas of concern. The WLAN/Blue tooth device (Intel Dual AC7260) doesn't seem to be recognised, so I'm not able to use WLAN, which is important for my work. External monitors are also not being identified. I have an HDMI port for attaching an external monitor, but I end up with the same picture on the monitor and on the laptop. When I check System -> Control Center -> Monitors, I'm shown one "unknown" Full HD Monitor and clicking Detect Monitors doesn't achieve anything. I'm assuming that it's the laptop Monitor that's being shown, since that's the desciption I got from ubuntu 12.04 when I checked the Monitor (ubuntu correctly identified the external monitor as a Fujitsu). My reasons for changing from 12.04 to debian? Complicated and ultimately very necessary but I won't bore you with the details.

I will trawl the internet for solutions to my other problems, but essentially I can work with what I've got if I have to. I'll post new threads if I need help. This one I am going to mark as solved.

Many thanks for all the support.

Mate desktop may have libre office
Post output of lspci to see if wireless is detected.
It will also show in dmesg.