Hi all,

I haven't done much with apt-get before, but I am trying to upgrade lighttpd. I have been told lighttpd is installed via an unstable .deb package, and when I use apt-get -fsu install lighttpd, apt-get tells me it is already the newest version.

$ sudo apt-get -fsu install lighttpd
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
lighttpd is already the newest version.
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
lighttpd: Depends: libpcre3 (>= 7.7) but 7.6-2.1 is to be installed
Recommends: spawn-fcgi but it is not installable
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

If I run apt-get -fsu install, I am told that lighttpd will be removed. This isn't exactly what I want.

$ sudo apt-get -fsu install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
libterm-readkey-perl libfam0 libterm-readline-perl-perl fam portmap
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
lighttpd
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 53 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Remv lighttpd [1.4.23-3+b1]

dpkg -l shows the following, if that helps.

$ sudo dpkg -l
...
iU lighttpd 1.4.23-3+b1 A fast webserver with minimal memory footprint
rc lighttpd-mod-magnet 1.4.19-5 Control the request handling module for lighttpd
...

Any advice on how to proceed with this upgrade would be much appreciated.

I've also met this ultra-smart actions of aptitude. Finally after a day of cracking my head I've removed everything and built soft from sources. I have no ideas, but if you need it fast, I guess you don't need to waste your time, build it from source. Keeping your server software up-to-date is strongly suggested, you know why. I personally prefer to build all my server software myself.
Also, that pcre 7.7 is old, current version is 8.01. 1.4.23 is old too, it has some critical bugs.
You might want to try backports and see if it contains newer releases, but if not...