hi,

experimenting with pantheon-greeter to get xdmp connections running, I corrupted my sources list in elementaryOS. Updates could not run properly due to unresolved dependencies of libmutter0.
Somehow I managed to reset this issue. But....

this caused the problem, that I lost my sources.list. It tells me method for apt/methods/http could not be found, while I try an update of the packages list in aptitude. (aptitude is the only left package manager on my machine)

I lost also apt-get.

can anybody help to get apt-get installed again, and with proper sources.list for the ElementaryOS Luna ?

many thanks and sincerely.... so far :-)

Denis

This is not enough information to go on really.

If you go to;
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Trusty

You can get the entire sources.list for Ubuntu for several versions.

If Elementary uses some of its own repos they should be listed somewhere on their site.

I do not see how you could corrupt your sources.list with the information you gave. I think there is quite a bit more information needed as to EXACTLY what you did and what you have done since.

If I were you I would run;
and post the entire output, no matter what it is, here. This would be a good start.

apt-get is part of the apt package. If you have an install cd/dvd you can put it in your machine and install apt using aptitude from the cd/dvd.

For sources.list you have a couple of options
1. Open Software Center > Software Sources and choose Main Servers for now.
2. In a terminal type Having said that I agree with Widget, I can't see how you have corrupted your sources.list from what you have posted here.
Let us know what happens.

Hello widget andk3lt01 , thanks for your response.
I'll give that a try this evening after work. (resinstalling apt from CD)

cat etc source.list gives:
Aptitude claims having problems with (translated from german ui)
After this message I can see in the next "error" screen my old used sources.list, which could not be resolved. Maybe du to the missing http methods.

The path /usr/lib/apt/methods/ lists only https (secure) not a http (?)

Good day

Interesting. I really think you need to try and tell us exactly what you were doing before this happened.

Your sources.list is interesting.

Here, from ubuntuguide.org, is the default 12.04 sources.list.
There is something you did, that has caused some change, major change, in your system. Knowing what actually triggered the change is needed to have any clue as how to fix it.

I really have to congratulate you on this. I am extremely experienced in breaking systems and have never done so in this manner. I believe in breaking systems as you learn from mistakes. Get good at mistakes and soon you are getting good at correcting them

A couple of observations. Everyone that uses Ubuntu or any of its respins and is new to Linux should go to and read the pages on ubuntuguide.org pertaining to their Ubuntu version, in your case Precise Pangolin (12.04 LTS) or if you are a smartass Pissy Penguin.

You are also much better off to use a "base" OS than a respin. While Ubuntu is a respin of Debian there is enough difference that you can call Ubuntu a base OS.

What respins do is to configure the system in a manner that suits the people doing the configuration. Many times they add things, take things out. Most of what they do is use the standard packages available in the base OS and do nothing that you can't learn to do.

You will not do it the way they do because you are not them. Therefore with a bit of work you end up with a customized install of the base OS, just as you do with a respin, but this one will be set up for you not someone else.

Right now you have 2 people working to help you on this thread. They were Ubuntu users and Ubuntu development release testers. Forget when he quit in disgust but I did after Xubuntu 12.04-testing was released.

Don't know about k3lt01 but I am not going to download, install Ubuntu based OSs and attempt to recreate a wreck. Just don't work with them at all. I do however run Debian so there is not that much difference in the package management system as the Debian APT system is what Ubuntu uses.

I am running the Debian version on which 10.04 was based on this box but my perferred version is Debian testing on which both 12.04 and 14.04 are based. Not using it because the box in my sig has died on me.

One thing Ubuntu is good at doing is complicating things. The vast majority of packages in the Ubuntu repos come from the Debian repos. You have seen the default sources.list for 12.04.

This is the complete and entire sources.list for Debian Testing on which all Ubuntu LTS version are based.
If you remove the last 2 of those lines and change "testing" to "unstable" you will have the complete sources.list for the base of all other Ubuntu releases.

As you probably know, adding complexity will had to fragility.

I do not know what else your particular respin adds to the Ubuntu complexity but this could be contributing to your problem. Posibly be the cause of your problem but I doubt it.

Your original sources.list would be a great help.

It should be in the /etc/apt directory. You can find the name by using the "ls" command which is short for LiSt. In this manner;
it will be named sources.list.xxx where xxx is some other thing like .bak some such. It will not be sources.list.d which is a sub directory.

When you have this simply run the cat command on that file and post it. This will tell us if your Elementary OS developers are using some packages from their own repo in addition to the Ubuntu repos and what Ubuntu repos they are using.

Again it would be great to know EXACTLY AS POSSIBLE what you were doing at the time of this malfunction. As close as you can get it. What application(s) you were using for what ever you were trying to do, any errors you can remember, any cli commands, if any used.

Without this information we are just spitting into the wind. Might work. Might just come back and smack us in the face.

Another rather urgent question is what you were actually trying to enable in your DM.

xdmp is some sort of development platform that appears to not be compatible with Ubuntu at all.

xdmcp is some sort of remote login tool for login to a remote DM for which there is Ubuntu documentation.

Interesting because looking at that folder in my system I have http and no https. Until you reinstall apt it it very difficult to even guess what's going on.

I agree with Widget, on both posts.

I gave up after 11.10 I did download 12.04 but just wasn't willing to deal with Canonical and politics anymore. There are better things in life than dealing with crap.

Nope not getting anymore *buntus. I'm a *buntu free zone.

Yep.

apt is missing / broken

apt-transport-https is not missing, hence why you can see /usr/lib/apt/methods/https but not /usr/lib/apt/methods/http (which is part of the apt package)

Just download the apt package for your architecture: http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise-updates/apt

Then
Once apt is reinstalled:
(the # (hash) means "as root", so if you have to sudo it, sudo it, etc)

and post the output

First of all I want to thank you for such a huge support from you all. You were typing a lot of thoughts and
gave hints. I hope not to dissapoint... I'll give my best...

First I mounted an installation image of elementaryOS as loop back. I did not find any deb file regarding apt
So I tried to download the needed packages, but I could not figure out which version I should use.
root@orbiter:/home/dk2/Downloads# cat /etc/debian_version
wheezy/sid
This let me face the problem, I do not know what distro I use. :-(
It seems to be mix of different, as widget told base-os...adding stuff...removing stuff....

ok so far. is it now wheezy or sid ? So I tried 0.9xx but everytime the package could not be configured due
other dependencies. (e.g. libapt-inst1.5.9 or something).

Actually based on cynwulf's hint how to resolv this, I tried this way again, with given version.
Again it claimed having dependency problems.

I started aptitude and it offerered me to resolve some conflicts. Glad for help I accepted. I was warned I am
downloading for unsupported or unreleased repositories. But somehow it managed to install apt.

So now I can use
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade and it runs.

Now again the "funny" part:
is still listed, as earlier. BUT during my upgrade I see repositories e.g. from my epson-printer
you see the download.ebz.epson.net line ? this is part of my old sources.list.

Anyway.... I will install elementaryos on a virtualbox and then copy paste the sources list.


To answer your question, what actually i did.... to be honest... in my head are so many ideas I am running into
I try to solve this fast, by googling and following howtos with code (bash) snippets to get that running. I should really
change the way I am working. Maybe this is also the reason why I miss typing words, expressions because my head
already sent this words to my hands. But the input buffer of my typing-engine "hands/finger" get overflowed. :-(

I wanted xdmcp. (I wanted to use my windows PC to connect with xming to my laptop, which runs elementaryOS, lighttpd
mysql and some smaller webprojects.
So I trustfully added ppa packages. Since then, I had always warning about libmutter0 dependencies problems.
I was aware that something with sources list has gone wrong. I wanted to get rid of that, I did not like that.
During the installation if was also removing (or trying to ) pantheon-greeter, which is supporting xdmcp.
It did not work. So I let it as it is.

Next I tried to get my epson-scanner-printer running. So I added the epson.net-repo and this ran fluently.

Somebody told something about using software-center.... dear Sirs... this one i am missing also now

Never mind, i will try to install the components needed for elementaryOS to learn which repositories are holding
needed files. I like elementary as it looks really good and it makes fun working. F12 with guildxterm and tmux.

So what would I need....
a grafic which describes linux components. Whose are exchangable with other componentes, e.g. several display managers
window managers.
a overview, where apt is located hierarchically. I understand that this is wrapping-thing around dpkg which checks
for dependencies. But if this is missing, which thoughts/steps-in-mind should be followed to successfully work with
dpkg.

Principles I need to understand how to modify/maintain linux-systems, to be able to tell what I have done. How you
do this?

Which distro would be the base distro actually? Gentoo allows that to build a customized system. But this was to
heavy for me to use. So I changed to sabayon, which delivers binary-packages for distribution in parallel to portage.
I went away from sabayon since an upgrade broke my kazaam screen recording utiliy.

Elementary was able additionally to get my mobile USB internet stick (WWAN stick) to get easy connected to the internet
So I fell in love with elementary. But unfortunately it is a distro derived from several other ones. debian, ubuntu
and then the thing with "adding things"... "removing things".... really complicated.


Please do not think you have to help me, and invest much time. You have helped me alot, so actually I can use apt-get
and go for further steps.

Best regards
DenisStgt

Actually what you are doing makes sense to me. Please do not look up early posts of mine.

GNU/Linux is great. It is not like Windows. It is very different.

First off you can do just about anything to the system. This is great. You can take any distro and make it do anything you want. Once you know how. Until then you can try to make it do anything and, probably, break it. You get to keep the pieces.

If I am advising someone on a good beginning system I recommend Debian and Cent OS and Mandriva/Mageia (they are two different forks of the defunct Mandrake OS).

You have some familiarity with APT but not much. You may want to stick with Debian branch for that reason. Cent and the Mandrake decendents are Red Hat branch and use RPM for package management.

While I prefer APT to RPM this doesn't mean you should or do.

The important thing is to pick one, preferably not some hybrid system, and stick to it.

Ubuntu has a lot of good documentation. Debian has a very good manual for users and another for administrators.

PPAs can be pretty harmless but will screw you if you do a version upgrade of a system. There is a package that should be installed by default but may not be in Elementary that will remove ppas from the sources.list and the packages from them and replace them, if possible, from the native repos so that you can upgrade to a new version of Ubuntu. Avoid using them for best results.

The litterature for Ubuntu for xdmcp is very complete for a system using lightdm and if you are giving this another whack in Elementary I would use that and follow the Ubuntu documentation on setting up xdmcp.

Go to;
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Precise

If you check the sticky posts at the top of the Ubuntu section in LQ you will see that it is about ubuntuguide. This is the best general information on running any supported Ubuntu version you are going to find that is free.

While somethings like changes to the file system and some applications and the Unity Desktop Environment make Ubuntu different from Debian it is still Debian based and uses the APT package management system. Therefore if you are wanting some information on the stuff under the hood, as they say;
http://debian-handbook.info/

and read it. Will give you a lot of information.

Don't know how good this is but what ever is there should be correct.
https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/ubuntu-help/index.html

For years the gui package manager for Ubuntu was Synaptic. Now they claim it is for expert users. As someone that installed Ubuntu as a noob and had no trouble using Synaptic I can tell you this is bullshit. Software Center is installed by default and is a royal pain in the ass. It was suggested because it is installed. Stick with apt-get, aptitude or synaptic. You will have to install synaptic under Ubuntu. I am surprised you have aptitude in Experimental as it is not installed by default by Ubuntu anymore either.

They claim you only need one tool for a job. Well you have a non functional apt-get but aptitude seems to work. Sounds like a good idea to have a "spare tire" in cases like yours to me.

With apt-get not working synaptic will not work either as it uses apt-get for the back end. Software Center is also a front end for apt-get (a very crappy one) so if apt-get is not working it won't either.

If you are looking for a distro that avoids the cli as much as possible I should point to the Mandriva or Mageia distros. Mandrake was the first "noob friendly" distro, not Ubuntu, and that was back in 1998. The Mandrake Controll Center was great then and now the MCC is better. One thing it excells at is setting up anything related to networking. Really a good pair of Distros.

I am assuming that Mandriva under the new set of devs is good. Have not tried it. I am familiar with it in the past.

Mageia is installed on my Loaner drive that I loan to people that want to try Linux out. That is an external drive so folks can try Linux at installed speeds and has several installs to show different distros and different desktop environments.

Mageia is installed with both Gnome3 and KDE. I have run it on another external with the Xfce DE that I prefer. I have not tried Mageia 4. My installs were not upgraded from 3 before my desktop box died. Mageia 3 worked very well.

To get non-free software, which you probably need for your wifi use the default install DVD which is not a Live Session disk. It is just an installer. The Live Session images are all FOSS software.

As a Debian user I should point out that Debian will not install that non-free stuff by default either. There is a Live CD for Wheezy that is official. There is also an unofficial Live CD available and put out by the same devs that do the official CD that includes the non-free packages.
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/un...-live+nonfree/

One last thing. You can not use, safely, Debian packages in an Ubuntu based system. Ubuntu for no obvious reason, has changed where some parts of packages are installed in the file system. Using Debian packages in an Ubuntu system or Ubuntu packages in a Debian system will, eventually, break your system. Elementary is not based on Debian. They are based on Ubuntu. Do not use Debian packages.

Many Ubuntu respins are now claiming Debian as part of their foundation. This is true in that Ubuntu is a modified Debian. They are only doing that because Ubuntu is making itself as popular as a turd in a punch bowl with their treatment of users.

Most honest respins that have concerns about Ubuntu and value their users have switched from being Ubuntu based to being Debian based. Best known ones are Crunch Bang and Backtrack. Crunch is an OpenBox using distro. Backtrack was a penetration testing OS that was simply dropped and the same people came out with Kali, the same thing but Debian based.

Once you choose a distro, stick with it. They will all do the same things. Yes some respins are easier to set up. Many have problems if you get creative and this may well be your real source of your current problem.

I have, still, no incling of how it is possible for you to have gotten to the point where you currently are. I have pushed my APT tools in all sorts of really stupid ways in an attempt to learn to use them fully. I am damned good at screwing it up. Have not come close to what you have achieved. Have never seen a similar post that wasn't due to someone removing, deliberately, a crucial file or directory.

Personally I suspect that Elementary is fine if you use it exactly as installed and will simply eat itself alive if you deviate from that default. This is a personal opinion based on experience with other Ubuntu respins and absolutely no experience with Elementary past looking at their web site. Do not take it as telling you to switch to something else. This is Linux, it is your box, it is your choice.

1 members found this post helpful.

As Widget has so eloquently mentioned people learn about Linux by using it. He learned by deliberately breaking it, I still remember him posting "bring on the breakage" with each new development release of Ubuntu (ah the good old days when Canonical actually appeared to care about Ubuntu users and what they said). I was never so "free" in my usage of Ubuntu as I needed it to be reliable for my work. We tested it, in our own ways, found and reported bugs (reporting bugs is an important part of being part of the Linux community). We also communicated online with other community members, as you are doing here, and learned from the expertise of some very wise Linux users many of whom will forget more about Linux than I will ever learn.

A couple of things I learned, some from a guy who called himself Bodhi-zazen, were
1. read the Man pages,
2. be a very wise (some may say judicial) consumer of information from Google (in other words don't believe everything you read on a link Google provides you with unless it can be verified in a few different places),
3. read wiki's of the various distributions (Arch Linux has a brilliant wiki and Ubuntu's community pages are very worthwhile reading for Ubuntu and its derivatives).

I have enrolled in this course which is normally $2500 but is free through this site and would recommend other Linux users do the same thing, even if it is just to help gather extra little bits of knowledge we don't already have. Last but not least how we learn about Linux is a very individual thing a method that suits me may not suit you and vice versa but using it daily will help.

As for what distro I'm just going to say Debian. If you don't feel like using Debian the only word of caution I would give is, and it mirrors what Widget has already mentioned, spin-offs add confusion to the mix and in many cases do not actually help new users to learn but rather add an extra layer of complexity that is just not required. If you want to use an Ubuntu spin-off then you may as well use an Ubuntu or maybe a LinuxMint (Linux Mint is diverging from its Ubuntu base quite alot now and does not natively use Ubuntu's Desktop Environment but instead has its own which as mentioned adds to the complexity).

If you don't feel like using a Debian based system (apt) then do some research on what other systems (RPM etc) are available and try the base versions rather than the derivatives. Many people love Fedora but it is probably more bleeding edge (up to date) than Ubuntu so I would stick with Centos in the RPM family. Another distro you could use is Slackware. I have used it and can vouch for its stability but it does have a big learning curve for people who are set in their ways just like I was with Debian based systems. Slackware will teach you alot but you do need to be mindful of package management because Slackware does not do most of it for you.