I recently ran

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

from xterm and left it to deal with the slow Uni internet. When I got back, the screensaver was on and it was frozen. Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, Ctrl-Alt-Del, nothing worked. I restarted and it booted, but it couldn't connect to the internet and lots of little things were acting funny. Buttons would do nothing, I would get strange errors, things like that.

Is there any way to repair my installation of Debian or undo or complete what apt-get was working on?

Please give us more information.

what version are you on? (woody, sarge, sid)

what were you trying to do? upgrading to a different version?
if so, did you do an 'apt-get update' before the 'dist-upgrade'

were you just upgrading your system within the same version?

when you rebooted, were any errors given on the screen?

was everything working fine in X at the moment of the problem?

have you read the APT-HOWTO?
debian.org > documentation > manuals >APT-HOWTO

>Please give us more information.

>what version are you on? (woody, sarge, sid)

It was sarge, but various things have been updated.

>what were you trying to do? upgrading to a different version?
>if so, did you do an 'apt-get update' before the 'dist-upgrade'

I didn't do apt-get update right before, but I did it within a few days of the dist-upgrade

>were you just upgrading your system within the same version?

I don't know, doesn't apt-get dist-upgrade update it to the newest version?

>when you rebooted, were any errors given on the screen?

I'm not sure; I usually get several errors like 'couldn't insert module; it's already loaded' and stuff that doesn't really matter when I boot. I'll find some logs when I get home.

>was everything working fine in X at the moment of the problem?

I wasn't at my computer when the problem happened, but it had frozen one other time in the past week. I should probably have run it from the console.

>have you read the APT-HOWTO?
>debian.org > documentation > manuals >APT-HOWTO

I hadn't until just now, but I knew most of the basic usage stuff and I don't really need the more exotic stuff. Their advice of

apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a

for a messed up instillation looks interesting, though. Should I try that?

"apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a

for a messed up instillation looks interesting, though. Should I try that?"

At this point, anything sounds good.

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a

do you have a mixed sources.list?