Hello everyone,
I'm running kernel 2.6.15 on a Pentium III notebook (Dell Inspiron 5000). I originally installed Debian Woody and am currently running a mixture of stable and unstable packages. I last successfully upgraded in the spring of 2007. Now I seem to be unable to upgrade, and unable to install new software. Apt-get hangs on the libc6 package:

# apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
gcc-4.2-base libgcc1 libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev libsqlite0 libstdc++6
Suggested packages:
libglib2.0-doc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libsqlite0
The following packages will be upgraded:
gcc-4.2-base libgcc1 libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-dev libstdc++6
5 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1002 not upgraded.
5 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/1729kB of archives.
After unpacking 446kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Setting up libc6 (2.7-4) ...
/usr/share/debconf/confmodule: /usr/share/debconf/frontend: /usr/bin/perl: bad interpreter: Permission denied
/usr/share/debconf/confmodule: line 17: /usr/share/debconf/frontend: Success
dpkg: error processing libc6 (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
libc6
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


so, I tried building dependencies:


# apt-get build-dep libc6
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to find a source package for glibc

I have stable, testing and unstable sources in my sources.list file.

Any idea how to get past this?

There's probably a conflict between stable packages installed and unstable packages that are trying to be installed (or vice versa) that doesn't allow those packages to install. Do you know which packages are installed form which branch? This problem is typical of mixed repositories, which is why it's generally discouraged.

I would try to pick one (probably lenny) and then dist-upgrade to it.

My original post was too vague. The error was generated originally by a dist-upgrade command. If I use dist-upgrade now, apt hangs on libqt4-sql. Then when I try to build dependencies it hangs on libc6. I get the source for libc6, and then try to install, but it hangs on tzdata:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libc6: Conflicts: tzdata (< 2007j-2) but 2007f-9 is to be installed
libc6-dev: Depends: libc6 (= 2.7-4) but 2.7-5 is to be installed
libqt4-sql: Depends: libsqlite0 (>= 2.8.17) but it is not going to be installed

It seems like this should be a minor problem, and maybe results from not updating often enough (?). I tried to install the stable version of tzdata to no avail, because it requires libqt4-sql, which also cannot be installed. Am I hosed?

I'm not sure how to fix it other than to select one branch (stable, testing, or unstable) and then dist-upgrade to that branch. Then try to reinstall programs that were from a higher branch.

For example, if you choose lenny (testing), dist-upgrade to testing. If it fails, then find out what has been installed from unstable, and uninstall those packages. Then dist-upgrade to lenny and reinstall those packages.

It's possible someone better versed at package management may be able to help you sort out this sordid affair. I've mostly avoided the problem by only running stable and dist-upgrading from one stable version to the next. I'm too chicken to play with a mixed system after my days in Red Hat with dependency hell...

apt-get -s install -t unstable libc6 libc6-dev libsqlite0 then keep adding the packages it complains about on the end of the line till everything will install then remove the -s for the simulation. Once done with this you may as well remove stable from your sources.list as you will be running unstable. If you want to run a mixed system then you should use testing and unstable with apt pinning to keep your system at testing while using the packages required/wanted from unstable as needed.