TL;DR Tried removing trinity-kde and it got hung up at removing ksmserver-trinity and dpkg gave me "error code 1." Haven't logged out yet so I'm not sure if my x-session is broken or not but I'm thinking it might be. Don't want to do anything until I fix this error. **EDIT** I should mention, I use openbox on it's own primarily.

This all actually started when I tried to install java 8 from this debian compatible ppa and ran out of space on / and did the usual, apt-get clean, removing no longer needed packages, etc. That "removing packages" part is what got me in to trouble.

I forgot I had trinity installed to test it out for a friend. I don't need that, so I tried to get rid of it with "apt-get --purge remove trinity*" thinking it'd go off with out a hitch. This is the output from removing trinity

It got hung up at ksmserver-trinity. I ran apt-get --purge remove trinity* again hoping it'd clear out the ksmserver but all that happened was this which has some dpkg error and mentioned x-session-manager is broken. It was here that I checked my disk usage, and seeing that I had room finished installing java. I don't know if that's relevant, but figured I'd keep all things that happened in order. After this I tried explicitly removing ksmserver-trinity with apt-get remove ksmserver-trinity but that failed again, so I did apt-get check. It told me of some unmet dependencies with ksmserver (go figure) and to run apt-get -f install. I didn't want to but I tried it, and got this.

I am really stuck here. Can anyone tell me what's going on and/or help me fix it?

Sorry to answer as I'm not a Debian user but... Isn't / still full or near full? Of course df can tell that.

Try aptitude interactively:
Use / to enter a search string, n to cycle through the results and b to find broken packages. It'll give you several solutions to fix the broken state, use the e, , and . keys to investigate each and ! to confirm your chosen solution. When you've selected a solution, cycle through the various packages marked for removal and mark them individually for purging. (press g exactly once, mark for purging, then press g again)

PS: next time you want to purge stuff, use
not "--purge remove"

I actually thought --purge remove was the only way. Thanks.

So I followed your instructions, but got stuck at the "n" command. I didn't do anything. b e , and . didn't do anything either. Aptitude is a completely new interface for me, I never used it at all since I've been using debian based systems. When I typed in "ksmserver" it pulled up the package no problem, with a "Bp" next to it. When I selected the package and hit enter, I didn't see anything about repair options or anything other than dependencies (3 of which are listed as unavailable). So now what...?

---------- Post added 2014-07-14 at 02:02 ----------

It isn't still full. I cleared out the cache that apt had and that freed up about 12% (I'm only running about a 10Gb / part).

Hi,

it seems the problem is that the alternatives are broken. From checking the update-alternatives man page you might be able tofix them with:
If this fails with some errror, please post it here.

If it works try to remove the trinity packages again.

Evo2.

Wound up getting it working with a very similar solution to evo2. Thanks for all the help everyone!