How can I find out the correct order of installation beforehand?

Matthew Wai · 09-29-2022, 01:35 AM

Code:

sudo apt-get --download-only install com.picpick.deepin --no-install-recommends

On 2022-09-27, I ran the above to download a number of packages and then manually installed them. When the following one was being installed, I noticed that some utilities were removed.

libavutil56_7%3a4.4.2-1_i386.deb

On completion, I found that I could not open any folders because File Manager no longer existed. Then, I rebooted my PC, which failed to boot into Linux.

On 2022-09-28, I reinstalled Linux.
On 2022-09-29, I ran the following to install PicPick.

Code:

sudo apt-get install com.picpick.deepin --no-install-recommends

A number of packages, including the following one, were downloaded and installed automatically.

libavutil56_7%3a4.4.2-1_i386.deb

This time, no utilities were removed. Now, everything works fine.

I suspect that the accidental removals happened on 2022-09-27 because the packages were installed in an incorrect order.
On 2022-09-29, during the automatic installation, Terminal showed the correct order .

Is it possible to find out the correct order without performing automatic installation?
The attached file shows the details of the said automatic installation.

pan64 · 09-29-2022, 02:25 AM

apt automatically handle dependencies - if possible.
When you download the package and install manually (with dpkg) this dependency checking is skipped (because you did not call apt install). dpkg cannot download and install all the dependencies.
I don't know why was that libavutil uninstalled.

Matthew Wai · 09-29-2022, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

I don't know why was that libavutil uninstalled.

"libavutil" was not uninstalled. It somewhat removed utilities from the system.

hazel · 09-29-2022, 06:08 AM

The way apt works is: if something is removed and it had something else dependent on it, that gets removed too because its dependencies are no longer satisfied. And any other dependencies of that second package which weren't installed explicitly but just came along for the ride are also removed. You can lose quite a lot of software that way!

The solution is always to check carefully the list of packages that are going to be removed before saying yes.

Matthew Wai · 10-14-2022, 01:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

apt automatically handle dependencies - if possible.
When you download the package and install manually (with dpkg) this dependency checking is skipped (because you did not call apt install). dpkg cannot download and install all the dependencies.
I don't know why was that libavutil uninstalled.

I just found that apt-get install will install the required packages from “/var/cache/apt/archives/” without Internet connection as long as the packages already exist there. Next time, I may just copy the backups into "/archives/" and run apt-get install, which will conceivably install the dependencies in the correct order.

pan64 · 10-14-2022, 02:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matthew Wai

I just found that apt-get install will install the required packages from “/var/cache/apt/archives/” without Internet connection as long as the packages already exist there. Next time, I may just copy the backups into "/archives/" and run apt-get install, which will conceivably install the dependencies in the correct order.

you might want to use apt download option to download.

Matthew Wai · 10-14-2022, 02:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan64

you might want to use apt download option to download.

I want to use "apt-get --download-only install" in combination with "--no-install-recommends".