apt-get - "The following packages have been kept back: ..."

Thoddy · 10-19-2007, 01:12 PM

Hi, I have an issue with this strange "GNU Java" gij and dependent applications, such as eclipse, openoffice, azureus, etc. ...

The simple thing is: I WANT SUN JAVA and thus manually install (unzip) eclipse and azureus and download and manually install openoffice, etc.

Until now I never had any problems. But since I upgraded to ubuntu 7.10 I removed all of this strange "Java" again and installed the original openoffice. After that, when I do an "apt-get upgrade" I get the message

Code:

The following packages have been kept back:
  openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-draw
  openoffice.org-headless openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-math
  openoffice.org-writer
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 7 not upgraded.

But I do not want to upgrade these to the ubuntu-openoffice packages. Now the notifier is there all the time telling me there are "new updates"...

Is there any way to tell apt-get not to process "kept back" packages??

Thanks a lot!

mjolner · 10-19-2007, 02:03 PM

If I understand you correctly you don't want to upgrade your openoffice.
Place your package/packages on hold. Easiest probably with synaptic. Aptitude or dpkg will do it too.

Thoddy · 10-20-2007, 04:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mjolner

If I understand you correctly you don't want to upgrade your openoffice.
Place your package/packages on hold. Easiest probably with synaptic. Aptitude or dpkg will do it too.

OK, the real problem does not seem to be the openoffice - apt-get has them "on hold", so updating these packages is deselected by default.

However there are "Distribution Updates", such as "bsh", "gjc-4.2-base", "gij", etc. (13 all together), that I do not want to install! They are all not installed so its no upgrade. And I have no idea why they should be installed - they don't seem to be required for any installed package!?

In synaptic I can only "mark for installation" and "mark for complete removal" - the rest is greyed. Although it is not installed, I did a complete removal, no change... the next time I start the package manager, I get the 13 "Distribution Updates" that I simply don't want to install...

How can I go round this "suggestion"?