apt-get hates the bejeesus out of me

moistTowelette · 10-17-2005, 03:51 AM

Can someone tell me WHY I always get this bullshit? It's so. damn. frustrating. and it's making me start to hate apt package management because it's happened at least a handful of times on every installation I've done (although with different packages). Some output should be self explanitory:

Code:

MiNGUS:/home/aaron# apt-get install alsaconf

...

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  alsaconf: Depends: alsa-base (> 0.9.0rc7) but it is not going to be installed
            Depends: alsa-utils but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

Okay, fine. So...

Code:

MiNGUS:/home/aaron# apt-get install alsa-base
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
alsa-base is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 311 not upgraded.

and...

Code:

MiNGUS:/home/aaron# apt-get install alsa-utils
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
alsa-utils is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 311 not upgraded.

Can anyone tell me WHY? I've checked that the versions are okay and everything, it's like apt is telling me I need something, then telling me I already have it!! AHHHKJHFSIUH

Thoreau · 10-17-2005, 03:57 AM

You can do a --check and a --fix-missing.

Or it may be that alsaconf's proper dep's don't exist-aren't uploaded yet.

Looks like you have a broken package from a forced install that is giving you grief. The --check will show you what it is.

powadha · 10-17-2005, 02:45 PM

Which version of Debian are you on and did you run an 'apt-get update' first?
Seems like you could better do an 'apt-get dist-upgrade' first since you have 311 packages waiting to be upgraded. That could explain some mixed up dependencies...

moistTowelette · 10-18-2005, 01:12 AM

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm running 3.1 Sarge.

I tried both those things, "check" and --fix-missing both return no errors. I tried again after doing an "apt-get upgrade", and I'm still getting the same problem. Could it be that I need to change my sources.list somehow?

Matty-J · 10-18-2005, 07:48 AM

I think there's a package called alsa-utils or something, and I'm pretty sure it contains alsaconf. Maybe give that a shot.

Good luck,
Matt

Dead Parrot · 10-18-2005, 09:14 AM

The "alsaconf" package is only available for Debian 3.0 (oldstable or woody), not for Debian 3.1 (stable or sarge). Like Matty-J suggests, the alsa-utils package provides alsaconf in sarge.

Quote:

Could it be that I need to change my sources.list somehow?

Very likely. Open /etc/apt/sources.list and make sure that there aren't any lines that point to oldstable or woody. You should only have lines pointing to sarge. (The best way to choose a Debian mirror would be running "apt-setup" and then checking /etc/apt/sources.list again to make sure that it's OK.)

Then do "apt-get update" and "apt-get dist-upgrade". (Notice that "apt-get dist-upgrade" is needed to upgrade your system from woody to sarge. Plain "apt-get upgrade" won't do it.)

Notice also that the 2.6 kernel has in-built alsa support, so if you haven't yet upgraded your kernel from 2.4 to 2.6, you might want to do that after dist-upgrading your system properly to sarge.

Wells · 10-18-2005, 11:26 AM

What was said before about apt-get dist-upgrade is probably a good thing. I noticed that you had 311 packages that had not been upgraded, and typically this is because of dependancies or additional packages that they need (or need to remove). Doing a dist-upgrade will fix a lot of this.