Well, hello there.

Yes, I'm a newbie, I've used FreeBSD before now, installing that one was a whiz, but other than that I've not done anything unix before.

Now, I would just like to say, I have searched for an answer... I recon the answer is probably pretty simple, unfortunately because of the nature of the problem its pretty tricky to google for.

So, here's the scenario:

installed debian off the seven CD set, unfortunately startx won't work (something about nice values, but thats another story entirely), so, anyway, I need to install some more stuff I've downloaded using windows to get my wireless pci card to work. Simple enough. The problem is when I try dpkg --configure libc6 after installing libc6 I get told libc6 depends on libdb1-compat and libdb1-compat isn't configured. Although I did install it. Okay, simple enough, I simply do dpkg --configure libdb1-compat... but wait, whats this, libdb1-compat depends on libc6 and libc6 isn't configured... I think what we've got here is a chicken or egg situation!

So my question is, how do I configure them when they both depend on the other one being configured?

Any help muchly appreciated! Phew, debian is tougher than I thought, for one thing I get told xFree86 isn't installed when it is and a whole bunch of other things.

hi, Gandhi
I don't know about the other issues with the chicken/egg problem but you could try the usual

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

to get X working.

If you installed by Ftp, using aptitude you would probably not have to use startx.
I haven't : it goes directly to a KDE login. Perhaps you would save all that trouble.

Hope that helps

Thanks!

dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 gives me an error telling me it hasn't been fully installed.

I thought aptitude was a package manager? Thats what it looked like when I used it. It is alot better in my opinion than dselect by the looks of it, so thanks! Unfortunately its all a bit messed up, trying to get my wireless card to work so I may use ftp.

Anyway, I'd just like to say that I solved the chicken/egg problem. I spent so much time trying to find an answer and then I found it in dpkg's man pages. What I did was dpkg --force-depends -configure <the thingy one needs to configure> and it worked fine, it basically just sets it to ignore the depency problems.

Anyway, thanks again, now just to finish the installation and get my card working, hopefully. But things have a tendency of never working right for me

Cheers gandhi, you will do it, man, I am sure !

You have a good habit, and that is reading the man pages, so you won't run
into problems for a long time by doing this. Try using ftp if you can get your
wireless card to work.

Feel free to post. This is just learning by doing, the hard but best way !