Open office and synaptic package manager problem
 

Dear All,

I recently installed broadband and got my 1st internet access with debian 3.1. Until then I had no internet access at all. Approached the forums for help and it all worked fine.

I have now started trying to update packages (gently to start) but have got into "hot water" with synaptic package manager and updating openoffice.

I used the package manager to identify and download new updates for openoffice and the download seemed to go well (from


deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free )

I then went to install using the synaptic pkge manager and again it seemed to go well with the usual positive messages appearing in the text window as the installation progressed.

When I looked in the usual place in the applications - office section of the desktop menu, open office had gone. When I ran synaptic again to repeat the install it complained that there were unresolved dependencies and could not install.

In short I've broken it (again!) and need some help.

is there a tutorial perhaps for using synaptic as I'm not really sure what I'm doing with it.

thanks Guys,
Greeb

How did you usually install your packages? I mean...prior to the time you got this Broadband working.

Also, the following line in your source.list file will get you the Etch "Security" updates and not the newer versions of your Openoffice (for instance).

As I notice here, you are telling us that you are using Debian 3.1 and you are then using the sources for Debian 4.0 (Etch). Dependency conflicts are meant to occur unless you do a dist-upgrade of your system.

installing the 3.1 pkges
 

Thanks for your help on this, I originally setup my debian 3.1 from a 2 dvd set I purchased from a supplier about 18 mths ago. Until I got the broadband working one week ago, any package installations were from these discs. I hadn't realised the line in my sources.list was for a diferent version of deb. Someone on forums advised me how to make an entry in sources.list which would enable my setup to go somwhere other than the dvds for upgraded package info.

What is my best course of action now? My broadband is not particularly high speed (400 kb/s) will this enable me to upgrade my dist, or shall I just stick with 3.1 until I can purchase discs?

Also if I want to get any package uprades for my 3.1 system what should the sources.list file look like?

Thanks,
Greeb

This is the stuff that you would want to put in your sources.list file. (To fetch packages related to your current distribution and that is Debian 3.1 (Sarge).

You will have to refresh your packages list in Synaptic every time you change your sources.list.

Also, the new Stable version of Debian (codenamed "Etch") is now released. You may want to upgrade your Debian from your current stable "Sarge" to "Etch"

For doing so, you will need to replace the above sources.list file with the following

The line in your existing sources.list is for fetching the Security Updates pertaining to the "Etch" version of Debian.
So, if you want to upgrade, you need the second sources.list in this post..and then run a command called dist-upgrade as root.

Upgrades are not always reliable though..they may get spooky sometimes.. ;)

Thanks
 

Thanks for your help on this, I'll give it a try.

All the best,
Greeb

When I tried your suggestion I got this message:

could not download all repository indexes

http://www.debian-multimedia.org/dis...6/Packages.gz: 404 Not Found

How can I check if the address is correct please? Is it as simple as just browse to the place described and check it out?

Many thanks
Greeb

errors
 

i tried to install again but got this in terminal window:

W: Couldn't stat source package list http://www.debian-multimedia.org sarge/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/www.debian-multimedia.org_dists_sarge_main_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 102567 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing openoffice.org-common ...
***
* Updating MIME database in /usr/share/mime...
***
Selecting previously deselected package openoffice.org-bin.
(Reading database ... 100161 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking openoffice.org-bin (from .../openoffice.org-bin_1.1.3-9sarge6_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package openoffice.org-debian-files.
Unpacking openoffice.org-debian-files (from .../openoffice.org-debian-files_1.1.3-8+1_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package openoffice.org.
Unpacking openoffice.org (from .../openoffice.org_1.1.3-9sarge6_all.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/openoffice.org_1.1.3-9sarge6_all.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/openoffice/share/dtd/officedocument/1_0/Manifest.dtd', which is also in package openoffice.org-dtd-officedocument1.0
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)

Failed to apply all changes! Scroll in the terminal buffer to see what went wrong.

Try replacing the following line

with

more info on the problem
 

this is the sources.list as it stands (and still has the problem identified in my last post)

deb ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sarge main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/ sarge/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ sarge main

As you can see there is no 'etch' line in it so I guess its some other problem.

Again many thanks for your help.

Greeb

This is the News from the Debian-Multimedia.org site:

So...I guess Sarge(previous Stable Version) is no more in the repositories.


I have seen some posts around in this section where people have testified that they have done an upgrade from Sarge to Etch without any problems. So you change your sources.list to exactly the following and then update your packages list in your Synaptic..and then Upgrade to Etch. (Just a Suggestion..if you think you don't want to upgrade to Etch, just remove the Debian-multimedia line in sources.list and you'd be okay.)

Still having dependency problems
 

I tried out the suggestion to keep with my sarge installation for now, but still get dependency errors when I try to install open office. It won't install - things seem to download ok, but when synaptic tries to install it causes the dependency errors.

Can I just go back to my cd roms and upload from there? Is that a good idea to get open office back?

Thanks,
Greeb

You can always switch back to CD-ROMs..you will have to change the sources.list again.

But the CD-ROMs would provide obsolete software. If you install from the CD-ROM, you will have to then fetch security updates / upgrades for bugs etc. So CD-ROMs are okay if you don't have an Internet connection and would go with the obsolete software anyways.

I suggest you remove your current version of Openoffice.org using Synaptic and reinstall (provided this time you have the sources.list for your Sarge Installation)
The dependency errors were due to incorrect sources.list file. You just simply cannot install an upgraded version of a particular software without upgrading the dependencies. (There maybe some exceptions to this, but not openoffice.org)

Cannot install openoffice by any method i know....
 

I have removed openoffice completely and removed the directories usr/share/doc/openoffice

I have also removed the prelink package

synaptic won't reinstall because of 'broken pipe' when it tries to paste

I have also used apt-get remove openoffice, which confirms openoffice has been removed - see terminal window contents below. Then apt-get check, and finally apt-get -f install openoffice.

My sources.list now points to the cd roms for Debian sarge 3.1

Any ideas gratefully received....

debian:~# apt-get remove openoffice
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package openoffice is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

debian:~# apt-get check
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done

debian:~# apt-get -f install openoffice
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package openoffice is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package openoffice has no installation candidate

Try

It's time to upgrade to Etch.

Read the Release Notes first.

If you keep trying, you'll probably eventually accomplish what you're trying to do, but you'll still have a badly outdated system.