On Thu, Mar 02, 2023 at 02:01:57PM +0100, daven...@tuxfamily.org wrote:
> > > > akb@akira:~$ LC_ALL=C aptitude why ifupdown
> > > > p netscript-2.4 Provides ifupdown
> > > > p netscript-2.4 Depends bridge-utils (>= 0.9.3)
> > > > p bridge-utils Suggests ifupdown
> > > > akb@akira:~$ LC_ALL=C aptitude why netscript-2.4
> > > > p netscript-2.4 Provides ifupdown
> dpkg -l netscript-2.4 or even dpkg -l | grep netscript
>
> Don't return anything… Not sure why "aptitude why ifupdown" mentions
> netscript-2.4 at all
Oh, that's reassuring. And also confusing.
Man, I really wish the aptitude(8) man page would explain how to read
the output of "why". What does the "p" mean? Purged? There's nothing
in the man page that explains the symbols in the first 3 columns, as
far as I can find.
I have *no* idea how to interpret this:
unicorn:~$ aptitude why ifupdown
p netscript-2.4 Provides ifupdown
p netscript-2.4 Depends bridge-utils (>= 0.9.3)
p bridge-utils Suggests ifupdown
unicorn:~$ dpkg -l ifupdown | tail -n1
ii ifupdown 0.8.36 amd64 high level tools to configure
network interfaces
Maybe "aptitude why" simply can't handle packages that are part of
the base system ("Essential", or priority "required" or "important"),
or which have been manually installed and aren't part of a dependency...?
unicorn:~$ aptitude why bash
i bash-builtins Depends bash (= 5.1-2+deb11u1)
unicorn:~$ aptitude why dpkg
i google-chrome-stable PreDepends dpkg (>= 1.14.0)
unicorn:~$ aptitude why abcde
Manually installed, current version 2.9.3-1, priority optional
No dependencies require to install abcde
OK, I guess it handles manually installed packages. But not base
system packages... at least not in a way one would expect.
In any case, ifupdown is an "important" package, and should be present
on almost all Debian systems, regardless of what "aptitude why" says
about it.
unicorn:~$ dpkg -s ifupdown | grep Prio
Priority: important
