On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 11:54:31AM -0500, Louis Wust wrote: Louis, thanks for your helpful reply. In answering one of your questions I may have solved the problem.
> On 1/27/16, Haines Brown <hai...@histomat.net> wrote: > This is strange for a number of reasons: > 1) How did Pin: and Pin-Priority: wind up on the same line with a \ > character separating them in the first place? Possibly this was a > copy-paste from a website that lost its formatting? > 2) If the old file suffered from invalid syntax, how did apt fail to > notice until recently, when you tried to install pulseaudio and > pavucontrol? Presumably you've had systemd pinned at -1 priority > for some time now. I think I resolved this mystery. While I did not edit the original version by hand and did not paste its content, but after purging systemd I issued this command to prevent future installation of systemd-like packages: # echo -e '\n\nPackage: *systemd*\nPin: origin ""\nPin-Priority: -1' \ >> /etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd this command shouldn't have produced garbage, but who knows (I'm over 80 and no longer take responsibility for my actions). I may have left out the "n". What is strange is that the problem didn't show up until after installing pulseaudio and pavucontrol. > On 1/27/16, Haines Brown <hai...@histomat.net> wrote: > > I can access ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists from another machine to > > update Wheezy. I can access .../unstable/InReleases with a web > > browser. > > But can you access ftp.us.debian.org from the Sid machine which is > exhibiting problems? You mentioned that you can access the site from > "another machine" and "with a web browser," the latter of which might > also refer to another machine. It did because I was only checking if the site was up. But your question led me to do it on my Sid machine, and I discovered something extraordinary. I discovered that my wifi interface name had been changed from wlan0 (what is in interfaces) to wlp3s0 (what iwconfig reports). I snooped online and apparently systemd-udevd can play this trick. Obviously I lost connection. So I hooked up an ethernet cable to restore the connection. I did a sid update, safe-up grade, update. This downloaded a lot. Unfortunately, it seems to have reinstalled systemd despite this statement in /etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd: Package: *systemd* Pin: origin "" Pin-Priority: -1 Should this not have blocked systemd? In any case, I next purged systemd again and successfully rebooted to a wifi connection using the wlp3s0 interface name. So the problem apparently was that something triggered the command systemd-udevd to change my wifi interface name from wlan0, which had been working, to wlp3s0. A new problem came up, however, which I should not pursue in this thread. When I run startx as user, the desktop is hung. When started by root, no problem. There is no reason for me to infer this, but I suspect systemd-udevd may have damaged the X window system as well. Haines