Hey there,

I installed gallery2 with apt-get. During the setup, it went through and asked me questions about my database information and had me enter it. Needless to say, when apache2 was then tried to restart it failed because there is php4.load and php5.load in the config and aparently I'm not suppose to use both? Anyway, I uninstalled it, then I renamed php4.load to php5.load and restarted apache. Then, when I tried to install it again, it just re-installed the package and didn't ask the setup questions. So, aparenlty, it doesn't fully remove it and keeps some of the old stuff. The same thing happened to me when I tried to install mono, which I can't get that fixed either.

Thanks for your suggestions,
nomb

apt-get remove --purge whateverapp

Try uninstalling with purge option, should get rid of config files

Ok, thanks. I knew there had to be a way.

dpkg-reconfigure package_name is used for an already installed package no need to purge and re-install.

Happy, will that also remove a file or folder created with the first install? Wasn't sure so thought that purge would be needed, although he did do a manual rename of the file.

I had a bad time with some sound app that reconfigure didn't work on after I had given a bad answer first time. When I uninstalled with purge it did the trick though honestly I don't know why I know purge will remove an unneeded service from starting if the app that needed it was uninstalled. Oops, don't mean to hijack the thread with my own questions.

Your fine, it is a good question.

No it just reconfigures the package eg. it asks the questions that were asked during configuration on first install.
Purge removes all files that were installed by the package a remove will leave the configuration files that are used with the package. If you want a service not to start but leave the program on system so it can be started manually then you would need to remove the S??service link in the /etc/rc2.d directory then it will not start and any upgrade of the package is supposed to not recreate the link as long as at least one of the them is still on the system in the other rc?.d directories.

I was trying to compile gpartd, and it said
...
checking for uuid_generate in -luuid... no
configure: error: *** uuid library (libuuid) not found
' ...'
since there is not a package called libuuid, I did

sudo apt-get install libuuid1

whereupon it said

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libc6 libc6-dev locales
Suggested packages:
glibc-doc
The following packages will be REMOVED:
tzdata
The following packages will be upgraded:
libc6 libc6-dev libuuid1 locales
4 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 407 not upgraded.
Need to get 12.0MB of archives.
After unpacking 3568kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y


....
now when I do ./configure it gives

configure:2806: checking for C compiler default output file name
configure:2833: gcc conftest.c >&5
/usr/bin/ld:/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/3.3.4/../../../libc.so: file format not
recognized; treating as linker script
/usr/bin/ld:/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/3.3.4/../../../libc.so:5: syntax error
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure:2836: $? = 1
configure:2874: result:
configure: failed program was:

....
so I think I am trying to go back:

sudo apt-get install libuuid1/stable

whereup it said
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Selected version 1.39+1.40-WIP-2006.11.14+dfsg-2 (Debian:4.0r0/stable) for libuuid1
The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
libuuid1
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 downgraded, 0 to remove and 407 not upgraded.
Need to get 33.4kB of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y

but it didn't fix my compiler

How do I go back? I suppose I shall try tzdata next..

Well there is a uuid-dev package which is what you would need when compiling anyways, anytime you compile and it does not find a library you need the development package not the pre-compiled library/binary these usually end in -dev.

And if you are going to do a lot of compiling from source you may as well install apt-file it works like apt-get in that you apt-file update as root then can use apt-file search file/missing as normal user to find the package that contains the file you need for a successful ./configure.


Well you have upgraded libc6 the main backbone package of any linux distro you must be mixing your sources which is not really the best thing to do with little experience at it. Since you have gone and done it you pretty much may as well do a apt-get dist-upgrade after having removed the line for stable in your sources.list to see how it works out.
You don't there is really no supported downgrade path for libc6 only upgrading to the newer version and that in this case requires upgrading your distribution to whatever it is you have in your sources.list other than stable, making sure that you install the tzdata it is going to be needed eventually.

Thanks Steve, but I managed to put it back together
FWIW here is what I did:
1) $ locate tzdata
2) sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/tzdata_2007a-3_all.deb
3) $locate libc6
4) sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.3.6.ds1-11_i386.deb
5) sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6-dev_2.3.6.ds1-11_i386.deb
6) sudo ldconfig
This latter because the manpage says to use it when you manually install a library


Ed