Here is the story. I needed to upgrade some software (such as firefox but many others too) for security reasons. I type "apt-get upgrade" and I get a list of about 50 packages are are being "kept back". I need those packages because if I don't have them, I am prone to several major security risks. Some of this software requires a package called libaspell15c2. Nothing will install without it but when I do "apt-get install libaspell15c2" I get a thing about needing to remove literally 100s of packages that are essentual for my system. What can I do to fix it?

The packages dependent on libaspell15c2 are being kept back as it'll remove kde among others. Till those packages are rebuilt to have the dependencies right it will be kept back.

Apparently mepis is based on sid. This is exactly the reason debian has three branches. So people who don't know how to fix these things or don't want to have this kind of problems have a stable or testing branch with packages that are more tested and have the dependencies ok.

So is the best method to just wait until a fix comes out? Like keep doing apt-get update every few days till I am able to upgrade those packages?

See if this helps;
http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/n...d=8306&forum=9
also you can upgrade to straight sid by editing the sources.list but some things may break may not ...

Yes there's no other method unless you want to delete all those packages that depend on libaspellx. If you run apt-get install libaspell15c you'll see what you're going to loose. I'm waiting for the dependencies to be right for some time now as well but I don't want to loose those programs it's going to uninstall.

Comprookie this is a problem in sid. The only thing dist-upgrade will fix is uninstall a lot.

I didn't know that.

Theres apparently an error here, libaspell15c2 should not of been created, so pyro ( the maintainer ) has created a replacement for libaspell15.

download this and then

apt-get remove libaspell15c2
dpkg -i libaspell15_0.60.3-4_i396.deb

The package is a pending import to the repositories, will be available in the respoitories when the ftp master comes back online.

This will allow you to upgrade/install kde.

I'm having the same problem, with this package and with libopenexrr2c2. I am trying to get the kde dev packages installed for kde 3.4. I installed the replacement libaspell15, but still getting the same dependency problems.

Theres two version of the file the one I linked too helped me bu theres also the
libaspell15c2 version.

At the moment I'm restricting what I download as theres quite a few problems with ABI upgrade. you may just have to wait a while.

Yeah I am thinking I will have to wait. I already have KDE installed and libaspell15, so it doesn't look like I can install libaspell15c2.

+1

I did an update a week ago.. and it unistalled a couple of programs (including gaim) .. i didnt care at the time until i realised that i needed to install libaspell15c? but to install that it wants to uninstall almost every package avail on my box.
So i just gave up :P ...

Is there currently a fix for this? Whats the current status on teh situation?

The current situation is this.

libaspell15 should never have become libaspell15c2 as its a C lib, not C++. Which means its unaffected by the ABI change.

So it was a mistake, some packages are aware of this and still require libaspell15. Some point to libaspell15c2 as they wheren't aware of this, this should be cleared up soon.

The two packages I pointed too can be installed side by side, So you can have both libaspell15 and libaspell15c2, till the package problems can be sorted out.

So your best bet is to install BOTH.

libapell15
libaspell15c2

Sorry if I wasn't quite clear.

How can you install both packages side by side? When I do apt-get install then I get an error about a conflict with the two packages.

Nevermind, I just did an apt update and upgrade and it actually installed libaspell15c2 automatically, even though I have libaspell15 already installed. A few days ago it would not let me do that. I guess they got it straightened out...