Synaptic erases entire OS instead of one program
 

Yes you read that right. This isn't the first time it's happened. It's happened enough that only by imaging the system will I remove software anymore.

Anyway I'm also asking:

1) Why does it do this? I want to erase one program (say firefox), click just on firefox, then let it go. I see in the terminal that it's erasing everything, XFCE, mousepad, emacs, etc.

It's not every single time but it's happened too many times before. Thank god for imagigers.

2) Has anyone else had this headache? is there a way of fixing synaptic to keep the nuke option off?

I have never encountered such a thing in about 10 years of using Debian and Debian-based distros. (I've generally had a least one Debian/Debian-based distro going during that time.)

I would start by taking a look in the log files /var/log/apt. Maybe they will offer some clues. If you find something questionable, post it here, being sure to surround it with code tags, which become available when you click the "Go Advanced" button beneath the "Compose Post" windows

Hi:

I find the issue your having with Synaptic to be bizarre.
Sorry to hear that happened.

Like frankbell I've never had a headache as such in 7 years:-

The only thing I can think of why Synaptic would hose other programs is because it's either not up to date, has a bug or is badly mis-configured somehow.

When I want to remove pkg's or software on my Debian based system I generally put it to bed as 'root' with:

I'd try removing Synaptic and re-installing it.:)

Are you sure it's Synaptic and not APT? (just making sure it's not APT broken or misconfigured)

-:::-Try launching Synaptic via the cmd-line and see if the terminal throws any errors.-:::-

What is the output of:
?

I've been using debian and derivatives for ~16 years, never seen or heard of your problem !

My first guess was that your were using a version of Mint. They are the only distro I know of
that modifies the synaptic code, to disable selecting all upgrades, for example.
I figured their devs messed up, but your post says debian?

Synaptic is my favorite tools for software on any distro.
When I have selected changes (upgrades, removals, new install etc), I then click on "Apply".
Then I am presented with a "Summary" popup. Do you get that?
and, do you check the list is only what you selected, before clicking approval?

^
1 members found this post helpful...

please show us the output.
without any much needed further and more definite information about the problem, all i can suspect is this:
FRANKENDEBIAN.

I used Mint for six or seven years on various boxes and still never encountered anything like this.

Another thought is to try using apt-get or aptitude and look for any error messages.

Here's a tutorial on troubleshooting the package manager. It's written for Ubuntu, but can easily be adapted to other Debian/Debian-based distros: http://support.system76.com/articles/package-manager/

There is one specific circumstance where this can happen: The package you want to remove is a dependency of a meta-package.
Meta-packages are used in APT based distros to install groups of programs, since APT has no concept of package groups. They contain no actual programs, but just have dependencies that are pulled in, when installing the package.
Now, when you remove one of the dependencies and it can not be satisfied in another way the Synaptic will also remove the meta-package that has that dependency, and in turn all other dependencies of the meta-package are marked as orphans and will also be automatically removed, since that seems to be for unknown reasons the default behavior of Synaptic (and aptitude, IIRC).
This is why I always use apt-get on APT based distros instead, which will mark the other dependencies as orphans, but doesn't remove them unless told to do so (autoremove command of apt-get or --autoremove option), so that you have the chance to fix the package states.

The only time I've seen this happen, is when the user doesn't fully evaluate the Pending Confirmation Dialogs.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

No OS either? Troll much?

:scratch:

Makes perfect sense-:)

Thanks for bringing this into the light:-