LinuxQuestions.org - apt-get errors...

Hi, readers,

I'm a sarge user, and seem to have locked my system from using apt-get any further due to some tricky dependency error. It all occurred during a routine ` apt-get update && apt-get upgrade all ` when the command ended with an error that went something like:

Code:

menon:/home/falling# apt-get upgrade all

Reading Package Lists... Done

Building Dependency Tree... Done

You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

  libperl5.8: Depends: perl-base (= 5.8.4-2.2) but 5.8.4-2 is installed

  perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.8.4-2.2) but 5.8.4-2 is installed

E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

After this, I tried to do an ` apt-get -f install ` to fix the dependency mis-mash, and this resulted in another error:

Code:

menon:/home/falling# apt-get -f install

Reading Package Lists... Done

Building Dependency Tree... Done

Correcting dependencies... Done

The following extra packages will be installed:

  perl-base

The following packages will be upgraded:

  perl-base

1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 229 not upgraded.

8 not fully installed or removed.

Need to get 0B/747kB of archives.

After unpacking 172kB of additional disk space will be used.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

(Reading database ... 61212 files and directories currently installed.)

Preparing to replace perl-base 5.8.4-2 (using .../perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb) ...

Unpacking replacement perl-base ...

dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb (--unpack):

 trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/perl/5.8', which is also in package gimp-perl

Errors were encountered while processing:

 /var/cache/apt/archives/perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

SO, there seems to be some error happening when apt-get tries to upgrade my perl distribution from 5.8.4 to 5.8.4-2.2. I've tried to remove the perl distro, but this is impossible since a whole slew of other apps, including apt-get itself I believe, depend on it. I can't install any other packages with apt-get now either, since it always dies at this dependency error no matter what I throw at it. I need to fix this error to start using my apt-get again, and as it currently stands, I'm totally lost.

So where I do begin? If anyone knows apt-get fairly well I'd really appreciate any advice on things I can try to correct this.

thanks