[plug] busted upgrade

[Nick Bannon]

On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 10:18:05AM +0800, smclevie wrote:
[...]
> When I remove the GUI packages (just to try to start from a base of sorts) 
> and try installing through tasksel a desktop environment,

Sounds like X is working, but your desktop environment is pretty
spartan. Tasksel is a good way to fix that.

> I get a rather significant list of packages that are 'not going to be 
> installed'.  WHY !!??

Package pinning and such makes it harder to diagnose these things.
Delete your /etc/apt/preferences file; do not set any default
distribution; and simplify your /etc/apt/sources.list to something
along the lines of:
deb http://mirrors.uwa.edu.au/debian sarge main contrib non-free

If you pick a specific package A and attempt to "apt-get install A",
you will get a more specific answer for why A won't be installed.
Perhaps it depends on a newer version of package B, but B won't be
upgraded due to pinning. Perhaps C is installed, C conflicts with B,
but you're quite happy for C to go. Then, try:
apt-get --purge install B C-

(install B, remove and purge C)

If that works, go back to A. If you're not pinning or mixing
distributions, this sort of problem should be rare.

Nick.

-- 
   Nick Bannon   | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick-sig at rcpt.to | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal