flash plugin causing problems

arunlfc · 05-26-2009, 03:06 AM

some months ago i tried to install flash but seemingly there were dependency problems.
But now whenever i try to install any package the same unmet dependencies occur and as such i am not able to install any software using apt-get.
I am using etch, and i get the following output:

Code:

ArunDebianEtch:/home/arun# apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  flash-plugin: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.6-1) but 2.3.6.ds1-13etch8 is to be installed
                Depends: libfreetype6 (>= 2.3.5) but 2.2.1-5+etch3 is to be installed
                Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.14.0) but 2.12.4-2 is to be installed
  libgtk2.0-0: Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.20.0) but 1.12.4-3 is to be installed
               Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7-1) but 2.3.6.ds1-13etch8 is to be installed
               Depends: libcairo2 (>= 1.6.4-6.1) but 1.2.4-4.1+etch1 is to be installed
               Depends: libcups2 (>= 1.3.8) but it is not going to be installed
               Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.16.0) but 2.12.4-2 is to be installed
               Depends: libgnutls26 (>= 2.4.0-0) but it is not going to be installed
               Depends: libkrb53 (>= 1.6.dfsg.2) but 1.4.4-7etch6 is to be installed
               Depends: libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.20.3) but 1.14.8-5 is to be installed
               Depends: libxdamage1 (>= 1:1.1) but 1:1.0.3-3 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

I tried the apt-get -f install command but it's asking to remove a lot of packages which i want to keep like kde, screensavers...so i cancelled.

Please help me if anyone knows how to deal with this.
Thanks.

jdkaye · 05-26-2009, 03:24 AM

A few suggestions:
1. use aptitude rather than apt-get - it handles dependencies better.
2. I think that your problems have very little to do with flash but are rather related to running etch. You will encounter more and more problems until you switch to the current stable debian version (called "Lenny").
3. Does your /etc/apt/sources.list point to stable? or to etch? You might want to change it to stable if it still points to etch.
4. You might want to do

Code:

sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade

to unblock your dependency issues.

Cheers,
jdk

arunlfc · 05-26-2009, 06:02 AM

I tried the dist-upgrade.
Aptitude asks for the debian cd which i put in the drive but nothing happens!!

jdkaye · 05-26-2009, 07:51 AM

Ok, that explains a lot. You never set up your sources.list so you can't really get any packages that weren't contained on the installation disk.

Open a terminal and type

Code:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

and report back on what the contents are (the cat command will print the file sources.list to screen).
cheers,
jdk

arunlfc · 05-26-2009, 09:00 AM

I had already added a few other repos i found on the net..
here's my sources.list:

Code:

#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r6 _Etch_ - Official i386 kde-CD Binary-1 200$

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r6 _Etch_ - Official i386 kde-CD Binary-1 20081$

deb ftp://ftp.debian-multimedia.org lenny main
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

It still asked for the cd to be able to continue(can't figure out why !)

I finally managed to upgrade my system and install flash 10!
Actually i changed etch to lenny in the sources.list file and did

'aptitude dist-upgrade' as you said.

One thing triggers me though...if aptitude is really a front-end to apt-get, why does 'aptitude dist-upgrade' work and not 'apt-get dist-upgrade' ?

Thanks for your precious help and time

jdkaye · 05-26-2009, 09:54 AM

Quote:

#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r6 _Etch_ - Official i386 kde-CD Binary-1 200$

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r6 _Etch_ - Official i386 kde-CD Binary-1 20081$

deb ftp://ftp.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

should look like this:

Quote:

#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r6 _Etch_ - Official i386 kde-CD Binary-1 200$

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r6 _Etch_ - Official i386 kde-CD Binary-1 20081$

deb ftp://ftp.debian-multimedia.org lenny main

Quote:

It still asked for the cd to be able to continue(can't figure out why !)

You need to comment out the 2nd line that begins "deb cdrom:". The "#" sign is the way you comment out a line. Just put it at the beginning of the line you want to comment out. Of course you can just delete the lines with the cdrom in them.

Quote:

One thing triggers me though...if aptitude is really a front-end to apt-get, why does 'aptitude dist-upgrade' work and not 'apt-get dist-upgrade' ?

Aptitude is not a front-end to apt-get so it doesn't have all the same commands. In fact it's a "high-level interface to the package manager" (dpkg).
cheers,
jdk

arunlfc · 05-27-2009, 01:15 PM

Thanks JDkaye
you were really helpful !