dpkg broken; configure -a doesn't help. Help!

pterandon · 06-05-2008, 09:24 PM

Hi.
I had a box with something like Knoppix 5.01 and I just wanted up dist-upgrade it to the latest Debian. I had not been updating it frequently because the synaptic package manager was refusing my (ACTUAL!) root password, and I didn't care that much about the box.

Anyway, after dozens of apt-get dist-upgrades and apt-get updates and dpkg --configure -a what have you , I ended up in a very frustrating situation with texlive. It was going into this situation where it'd use up 100% of my CPU in the update and never finish. Browsing on the web, I found a similarly reported problem. The guy had to manually dkpg a bunch of stuff for every language, something I didn't want to do. (Aside: who ARE these texlive guys?

)

Anyway, out of sheer stupidity, I thought I could be slick and just delete the folders that had anything to do with texlive. That didn't really help me in any fashion. So I tried to load every file associated with texlive using synaptic, and it said it couldn't help me until I did dpkg --configure -a. Now that merely gives a long stream of errors, ending with:

Thanks in advance for any advice. I'd happily just rip everything to do with texlive out of my life forever-- is there a wipe command?

Code:

dpkg: error processing texlive-lang-cyrillic (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of texlive-metapost:
 texlive-metapost depends on texlive-base (>= 2007-11); however:
  Package texlive-base is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing texlive-metapost (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of texlive-lang-german:
 texlive-lang-german depends on texlive-base (>= 2007-11); however:
  Package texlive-base is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing texlive-lang-german (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: too many errors, stopping
dpkg: ../../src/packages.c:265: process_queue: Assertion `!queue.length' failed.
Aborted

pterandon · 06-05-2008, 09:36 PM

Um, I got stupider! I kept trying variations of the commands, and it kept mentioning /var/lib/dpkg/. Uh, so, I uh, rm -r 'ed it!

Now I think my system is completely broken, and I may have to just reinstall. That was the frustration from the beginning, that things just weren't working right with a mild-mannered updates and upgrades. So I took the law into my own hands, and now I've killed the puppy. There goes any hope of a second career as a linux dude!

AlucardZero · 06-05-2008, 11:01 PM

uh.. yeah. you're boned.

first mistake was trying to go from Knoppix to Debian. Not the same thing.

second mistake was removing /var/lib/dpkg. See http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/re...recover-status or just reinstall.