I have tried several times over the last week to do aptitude upgrade but get the following every time:

The attempt then fails and returns to the prompt. The same happens if I try to install anything.

Does anyone know what is happening here and what I can do about it?

What does your /etc/apt/sources.list look like?

And since glibc-2.7-1 is a virtual package, I believe you can remove it with no problems (though I'd simulate it first and make sure it doesn't remove the actual glibc...)

My /etc/apt/sources.list:

I don't appear to have glibc installed!

Sorry, I'm not very well versed in the output of aptitude search. What are the letters on the left? I sort of assume "p" meant "purged", but I don't know what "v" would stand for...

A "v" indicates a virtual package.
An installed package would have an "i" to the left of the entry.

Anyway I've just solved the problem. I did aptitude search on "locales" and got a "B" to the left of the "locales" entry in the resulting list of packages. I think this means broken, so I did "aptitude install locales". The result was that glibc was installed as a dependency. I have now done "aptitude safe-upgrade" and all went well.

However, I have no idea why I appear to have lost glibc in the first place.

Thanks for your assistance,

Mikie