That's very strange...you aren't using some old Sarge installer which pre-dates when it went Stable, are you?

If you are using pure Debian Stable, then there should have been none of what you're talking about.

If you are trying to mix software from other repositories than just Debian Stable, then you're talking about doing something which is pretty complex and problems are not surprising. Debian Stable isn't meant to be mixed with anything from Debian Testing or Unstable.

Like I said, you're in a better position to know what you did to the system than any of us.

BTW, getting X to start up is usually possible using the generic "vesa" driver, even if the specific graphics card being used doesn't have a specific driver. If you're having problems getting particular hardware to work, then messing around with apt's repositories is NOT the answer.

It sounds to me like you're trying to dist-upgrade from Debian stable to Debian testing or unstable. That more or less won't work. After Sarge went stable, a massive overhaul of Debian Testing was required to move from XFree to Xorg. Doing a dist-upgrade from Sarge to Etch can be problematic.

Basically, it sounds like all of your problems aren't with apt, they're actually problems with hardware. To solve your hardware problems, you've been attempting to do some advanced and/or impossible things with apt, but that's not the right way to do it. Mixing Stable, Testing, and Unstable is NOT something for a Debian novice--you can easily break your system if you don't know what you're doing (and obviously, you don't). Mixing Ubuntu with Debian is almost certainly going to break your system, even if you know what you're doing (if you know what you're doing, you wouldn't be doing it in the first place).

To solve the hardware problems, start up some new threads on the specific hardware issues. Don't forget that we can't help you figure out any hardware problems if you don't specify what hardware you have.

I have been using debian stable mirrors and not testing/unstable, at least im pretty sure that i have only used mirrors from stable because i remember that i was checking for that so i wouldnt mess up the system.

I have serveral times had to use vesa to get X to work when using debian or ubuntu for example.

Maybe it was the change from Xfree to xorg that made apt act differently, ill keep that in mind that sarge isnt suppose to have xorg installed.

I have never said i have mixed debian with ubuntu while using debian, so calling me a noice because of that is uncall for. Do you here mean that xorg is only for debian testing or/and unstable.

Thanks for your help with this. I dont really care if you think im a novice, but i would like to say that i have been using linux for serveral years, been setting up services like dns, apache and a lot more. So maybe that will get you a little heads-up about that im not only a total novice, but of course you can think whatever you want

If you've stuck to the standard Debian Stable repositories only, then there's no risk of accidentally trying to install Xorg. Xorg isn't in Debian Stable at all.

Basically, if you installed Debian Stable and never edited /etc/apt/sources.list, then you should be safe. If you did add some lines to sources.list, then you probably messed something up. The only thing you can really add to it and be sure of no problems is something like "deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sarge non-free".

By default, Sarge only puts the "free" repository in sources.list. Adding the "non-free" repository should be okay. Those are the only official Debian repositories.

Personally, I use Debian Etch with no problems with apt whatsoever. I have only the default software entries, plus the "non-free" repository.

Note that there are a LOT of us using either pure Debian Stable or pure Debian Etch or pure Ubuntu with no problems at all with apt. You're in the better position to figure out what's going wrong.

Exactly what is in your /etc/apt/sources.list? As far as I can recall, you've never even posted your /etc/apt/sources.list. It sounds like you've been editing it, so that it's containing something other than the standard Debian repositories.

This is what my debian sources.list looks like:

That sources.list includes a lot of non-standard repositories. Only the first three lines are part of the standard repositories. I personally have never used "contrib"--only "main" and "non-free", so I don't know if "contrib" could cause problems.

I've had spotty luck with ftp.nerim.net; I've dropped it from my sources.list entirely, ever since kaffeine could play all the media files I wanted.

I've never used "debian-unofficial.org" or "backports.org". The former is obviously unofficial (obvious to native English speaking users, that is). The latter is also unofficial, in case you didn't already know.

There's nothing inherently wrong about adding unofficial repositories to your sources.list, as long as you are aware of what you're doing and you understand that it can cause things to break if you're not careful. It seems that you don't really understand that only the default sites in sources.list are the official ones. Just because an unofficial site has a repository labeled "sarge" doesn't mean that it's an official Debian repository.

One of the three first lines is a "contrib".

Thanks for an informative post. So, then i have a question. If i want to for example install kdevelop and i cant find it in the official debian repositories. If i then add an unofficial repository for sarge to get kdevelop installed ..then i will actually risk breaking apt or maybe the system in some way?

has changed. It's now That's pretty safe, but I would recommend no unofficial repositories for Sarge. (OTOH, I don't recommend Sarge anyway.) The official Debian repositories surely include kdevelop.

And whats your preferences file?

Also doing a apt-cache policy would be good information


No need to search further... if you mess your list of sources and your preferences, don't expect it to work.

I usually always use apt-cache to search for packages. Messing with list of sources, you mean you mess it up with adding unofficial repositories right and mirrors that might break the system..

I dont know what you mean by "preferences file" and please dont say "dont you know THAT?" in your response. That being said i have deleted sarge from my computer due to that i have a very unsupported graphic card. It was lagging when i used the desktop for example. I would still like to know what the "preference file" is.

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/
http://backports.org/instructions.html
man apt_preferences <-- take some coffee before reading this

Yes, "apt-cache search" for searching

apt-cache policy will show what is the priority of each sources.list line you have. These priorities are defined in the preferences file. This is important if you take packages from several places as you do.

The other solution is to only use the official sarge source and then you don't have to bother with priorities.

I've seen horrible things in the thread "post your sources.list" in debian. As usual, its better to understand what you do.

Try to use an official sources.list :that is one line for your release (stable/testing/unstable) :

For stable:

deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free

And if and only if you really need to get newer packages (that maybe partially unstable btw..), add these two AT THE SAME TIME:
-> deb http://www.backports.org/debian/ sarge-backports main contrib non-free in sources.list
-> this to /etc/apt/preferences (create the file if not exist)
Package: *
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 200
(this puts sarge-backports in lower priority that sarge official)

Then for packages that you want that are not yet in sarge, ex mutt, add this to /etc/apt/preferences:
Package: mutt
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 999
(this selectively puts mutt from backports in higher priority than the official)

You didn't know THAT?