Dependecy gaps between udev 0.074 and linux-image 2.6.12
 

During an upgrade of my machine I have run across a three-way dependency gap between udev 0.074, linux-image 2.6.12 and hotplug 20040329-25.

I performed a dist-upgrade to move up to the latest distro and saw the udev refused to install because it claimed that it needed a hotplug later than 20040329-17. So after manually installing it, I ran apt-get -f install udev to force the udev package to install, only for it to fail with the message:

udev requires a kernel >= 2.6.12, aborting.

Therefore I went and installed linux-image-2.6.12-1-686 and reran udev, only for it to fail again with the message that it needed hotplug! So after reinstalling hotplug and running apt-get -f install udev once more, it once again refuses to install!

Can anyone help me figure out how to simultaneously get udev, hotplug and linux-image all happy so that I can finish the dist-upgrade command (of which there are 100MB of packages spooled in /var, waiting to be installed)?

udev 0.074 conflicts with hotplug. You can install either one or the other but not both. I'd suggest that you should go for udev and forget about hotplug -- you won't need it. :)

EDIT: I forgot to say that you should *purge* hotplug (aptitude purge hotplug) before you install udev 0.074.

When I run 'aptitude purge hotplug' it wants to purge nearly 263MB worth of packages!

How do I purge _only_ the hotplug package? And what order should I run the remaining apt commands after hotplug is removed?

Heh, I can see why you don't want to do that. :D

OK, can you just install the 0.074 version of udev? That should automatically remove hotplug. You can run "apt-get --purge remove hotplug" afterwards. This should remove the config files for hotplug without removing those 263MB worth of packages.