On Fri, 29 Nov 2024 12:30:44 -0600
David Wright <deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:
> On Thu 28 Nov 2024 at 07:55:37 (-0600), Richard Owlett wrote:
> > Running Debian 12.7 with MATE
> > When launching Synaptic I get a message saying
> > [ You have 1 broken package on your system!"
> > Use the "Broken" filter to locate it. ]
> > Synaptic's Help isn't helpful :{
> > It also reports packages to be updated.
> >
> > Also started to install gnumeric and it wanted to remove some files
> > I associate with printer drivers and also ghostscript.
> >
> > To investigate I searched for it and Synaptic had a red filled box
> > to the left of its name.
> >
> > I did a power off/on restart. Still the same.
> >
> > What should I do now?
> > I suspect using apt &/or cousins would be more informative.\
> > Never used them.
> >
> > Help please.
> > [ learned >60 years ago - If you don't know what you're doin
> > *DON'T*!!!]
>
> $ dpkg -l | grep -v '^ii '
>
> may give you an idea of which packages are broken.
>
As to what can be done... 'broken' usually means that one or more
dependencies of the package are unavailable, and cannot be found in the
selected repositories. This happens reasonably often in unstable, but it
shouldn't happen in a new installation of stable.
If I were to guess, I'd say it involved a package which used to be in
an older stable, but an upgrade to a new version of stable has occurred,
and the new version doesn't contain the package. The package will not be
removed, but it is now unsupported, and libraries it depends on may
have been upgraded to versions outside the dependency specification. I
have seen that happen, and it was a package I used to use occasionally
before the upgrade. Some years ago now.
We will have a better idea once some useful error messages have been
obtained, such as by trying to upgrade the package using apt. Actually,
Synaptic should be able to show the errors, by looking in the Details
box during an upgrade attempt. It should display about the same
messages as apt would.
--
Joe
