Cryptic error message from "setserial".
Hi, Debian! I've installed Debian 3.0 (Woody) on a new(ish) PC from the set of 8 CD-Roms released in summer 2002. I'm having some trouble configuring my PCI serial modem. Would somebody here point me towards a solution, please? * I've installed the following "big friendly" kernel (output from uname -rsv): Linux 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 * My modem, an internal serial PCI modem, is at port 0xb000 irq 4. I know this by looking at /proc/pci. The relevant entry in this "file" is: Bus 0, device 11, function 0: Communication controller: Lucent Microelectronics Venus Modem (V90, 56KFlex) (rev 0). IRQ 4. Master Capable. No bursts. Min Gnt=252.Max Lat=14. Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xde00 [0xdeff]. I/O at 0xb000 [0xb0ff]. I/O at 0xb400 [0xb4ff]. I/O at 0xb800 [0xb807]. Through a trial installation of a different OS version (SuSE Linux 7.0), I know that the modem itself is in working order. * I want to use the modem on /dev/ttyS2. I therefore type the following command (as root, of course), all in accordance with the modem's fine manual: # setserial /dev/ttyS2 uart 16550A port 0xb000 irq 4 This returns the error message: "Cannot set serial info: Address already in use" which I don't understand. Presumably "Address" means "port address 0xb000", but I haven't a clue what "already in use" could mean. What is this error message telling me? What do I have to do (if anything) to take it "out of use" first? * On booting up, the following relevant seeming messages were written to /var/log/messages: Nov 5 20:39:45 acm kernel: Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled Nov 5 20:39:45 acm kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 4 for device 00:0b.0 Nov 5 20:39:45 acm kernel: PCI: Sharing IRQ 4 with 00:07.2 Nov 5 20:39:45 acm kernel: PCI: Sharing IRQ 4 with 00:07.3 Nov 5 20:39:45 acm kernel: ttyS04 at port 0xb000 (irq = 4) is a 16550A What does this last line mean? What is "ttyS04"? (I haven't got a /dev/ttyS04 at all, I don't even have a /dev/ttyS4.) Is this line an indication of port 0xb000 coming into "use"? ***** Any pointers to getting my modem going would be appreciated in the extreme. Thanks in advance! -- Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Woody installation: can't find my /dev/hdg to install to.
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002, Barney Wrightson wrote: >Alan Mackenzie wrote: >> I'm trying to install debian 3.0 (woody) from CD to my Athlon PC. The >> installation program fails to find my hard drive (which other >> (commercial) distributions have located variously at /dev/hdg and >> /dev/hde). >> The problem seems to be that my (sole) hard drive is _not_ on the primary >> IDE controller. It is on a secondary controller because this latter >> works at ATA-100 speed. [ ] >Which boot image are you using? I assume it is "vanilla" off of the 1st >CD. Try using "bf24" (boot off of cd 5 I think - or you can choose it >somehow off of CD 1) and see if that works. I have an Asus A7V which has >a secondary Promise ATA-100 controller onboard, and I am pretty sure it >was detected automatically when I used the bf24 boot image to install. Yes, bf24 is just the business. THANK YOU! After a pleasant 3 hours this afternoon, I've managed a trial installation on a spare 1Gig partition. It's excellent to have found, for instance, Emacs 20 as well as Emacs 21 available. I've still got to get my screen set up properly (with framebuffer), to give me a decent screen resolution. I've still got to configure X (for the few programs I want that need it). I've still got to configure my ISP connection properly. I'll probably want to build a kernel. But, what the heck? Another 5 or 6 hours, and I'll be there. By the way, what does bf24 stand for? Presumably the "24" means kernel 2.4, but what about the "bf"? "big friendly", perhaps? Whew! _What_ a relief to have a halfway decent installation program after battling for around 20 hours with SuSE's yast2. What do these guys in Nuremberg think they're playing at? yast1 might not have been lovely, but at least it was usable. yast2 is suitable only for the point-and-click brigade who're not too worried about fine details, like how their hard drives are partitioned, or what software is installed. It drove me to distraction. I'm _NOT_ prepared to use a mouse-driven GUI installation program, particularly one which flickers horribly at 60Hz on my 17" CRT, and even worse is the clueless mechanical way they made it into a "keyboard-driven" program by simulating mouse movements by arbitrarily long repeated thumping. In each screen of the installation program, the key combinations were different, sometimes went to the next screen, sometimes it went into a subscreen of the current one. Then for the critical bit (the package selection screen) they put the help-window (about 25 characters narrow) on the left, and the package descriptions (about 45 characters narrow) on the right, so that you had to horizontally scroll EACH PACKAGE DESCRIPTION (yes folks, all 4k of them) to decide whether to install it or not. Then you select a package, only to find that the S (or whatever it was) has taken the keyboard focus away from the package list, so you have to thump 5 or 6 times to get back there again. It used to take me about 2½ hours to go through SuSE's packages, selecting what I want. With yast2, it would probably take about 40 hours. No thanks. OK, I'm 80 Euros down for SuSE 8.0, but my time and sanity's worth a lot more than that. Cheerio, SuSE! <\off-topic rant> >HTH It did! >Barney. -- Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Woody installation: can't find my /dev/hdg to install to.
Hi! I'm trying to install debian 3.0 (woody) from CD to my Athlon PC. The installation program fails to find my hard drive (which other (commercial) distributions have located variously at /dev/hdg and /dev/hde). It merely invites me to supply a Hard disk driver on a floppy disk. The problem seems to be that my (sole) hard drive is _not_ on the primary IDE controller. It is on a secondary controller because this latter works at ATA-100 speed. The hard drive is in working order, and linux kernels can be successfully booted from it. My motherboard is an Epox EP-8K7A (or maybe an Epox EP-8K7A+ ??). Presumably, I can give the installation kernel some parameter(s) which will tell it to look at the third IDE controller to find a disk to install onto. Presumably, also, this is described in a fine manual somewhere I haven't yet been able to find. Would somebody please point me towards the appropriate documentation, so that I can get my system installed. Of course, if anybody is generous enough just to tell me what the pertinent parameters are, that would be most welcome, too. :-) Many thanks in anticipation. -- Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany) [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, debian!
My system: Debian Sarge, with little alteration other than a kernel
upgrade (to 2.6.8).
I currently have aptitude 0.2.15.9 compiled at Apr 7 2005 13:32:48. I
am having severe problems with it, and have become totally confused.
I start aptitude. This status message appears at the top right of the
screen:
#Broken: 12 Will free 16.7MB of disk space DL Size: 6215kB
. Using the aptitude command `find broken', it reports, amongst others,
vim as being broken, giving as further details:
* vim depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6)
* vim depends on libncurses5 (>= 5.4-5)
* vim depends on vim-runtime (= 1:7.0-122+1etch3)
However, vim works just fine (I'm using it to write this email).
#
So, I try to update aptitude itself (this will surely help me with my
other problems ;-). To begin with, I start aptitude, and type ":" on
each of the 8 lines ("--- Security Updates", ., "--- Tasks") in the
hope of clearing out dross.
I now find aptitude in the list (Successively ing "Upgradeable
Packages", "Admin", "Main", "Aptitude"). It gives a list of
dependencies, but doesn't say whether it is the current aptitude
(0.2.15.9) or the newest one (0.4.4-4) which so depends. Which is it?
Several of these are shaded red.
I type "u", and it tells me it's connecting to several hosts (presumably
to ask them if they're awake), and then that it's downloaded 0B in 21s
at 0B/s. Is this an error message, or an expected status message? What
is it trying to download here?
I now type "g", and the heavens open. In the top half of the screen I
get the message:
--/ Packages being removed because they are no longer used:
followed by a frighteningly large list (about two hundred) packages
shaded purple. If this sentence were to be reformulated with the second
verb active, e.g. "Packages being removed because X no longer uses
them", what would X be?. Then
--/ Packages being installed to satisfy dependencies
followed by 20 package names (such as cupsys-common, libgnutls13), then
--/ Packages being deleted due to unsatisfied dependencies
followed by an even frighteninglyier large list (~400 packages,
including many libraries). Lower down there is a list of 70 or 80
packages to be updated.
At this point, I type "q" to quit, for fear of utterly fubarring my
system, and in a state of high confusion.
#
OK, my system works. Nothing I do on my Debian box from day to day
seems affected by any of the alleged dependency problems. To be honest,
I don't really believe aptitude's assertions of brokenness.
How did I get into this state? I tried several months ago to upgrade
python (which I was trying again today), and all this happened.
I don't seem to be able to clear this dross out of my aptitude status.
Where are the files which record all these things? (There's no mention
on the aptitude man page or the reference manual.) The "u" command
doesn't help here. It downloads 0 bytes in 21s, again, and doesn't
appear to do anything.
Would somebody please explain what's happened to my system, and how to
fix it. I would like to be able to _just_ install software, in
particular a >= 2.4 version of python.
Is there perhaps some command (apt-foo, perhaps??) which could rebuild
the package database on my system?
Is there perhaps a less flexible, easier to use package manager?
aptitude is about as complicated as mutt, but because I only use
aptitude at most a few times a year, I'm never going to get to grips
properly with it.
Thanks in advance for the help!
--
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi again,
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 08:47:35PM -0500, Mumia W.. wrote:
> On 06/19/2008 02:22 PM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> >Hi, debian!
> >My system: Debian Sarge, with little alteration other than a kernel
> >upgrade (to 2.6.8).
> >I currently have aptitude 0.2.15.9 compiled at Apr 7 2005 13:32:48. I
> >am having severe problems with it, and have become totally confused.
> >I start aptitude. This status message appears at the top right of the
> >screen:
> >#Broken: 12 Will free 16.7MB of disk space DL Size: 6215kB
> >[...]
> >Would somebody please explain what's happened to my system, and how to
> >fix it. I would like to be able to _just_ install software, in
> >particular a >= 2.4 version of python.
> >Is there perhaps some command (apt-foo, perhaps??) which could rebuild
> >the package database on my system?
> >Is there perhaps a less flexible, easier to use package manager?
> >aptitude is about as complicated as mutt, but because I only use
> >aptitude at most a few times a year, I'm never going to get to grips
> >properly with it.
> >Thanks in advance for the help!
> To know what is going on with your system, we would need to see your
> /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/preferences files.
#/etc/apt/sources.list:
#
deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib
deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib
#
I haven't got an /etc/apt/preferences. However, I can see one problem.
I've got "stable" where I really want to have "sarge". "stable" points
at the current Debian release, which changes every now and then. This
seems a source of my problems.
> The output of this command would also help:
> aptitude -sV upgrade
#
[ a few status messages from reading the archive ]
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
cjk-latex [4.5.1-4 -> 4.7.0+cvs20061019-2]
freetype1-tools [1.4pre.20030402-1.1 -> 1.4pre.20050518-0.4]
hlatex [0.991-6 -> 1.0.1-2.1] hlatex-fonts-base [0.991-2.1 -> 1.0-3.1]
libttf2 [1.4pre.20030402-1.1 -> 1.4pre.20050518-0.4]
The following packages have been kept back:
a2ps [1:4.13b-4.3 -> 1:4.13b.dfsg.1-1]
bsdmainutils [6.0.17 -> 6.1.6] bsdutils [1:2.12p-4 -> 1:2.12r-19etch1]
[~500 packages "kept back"]
zlib1g-dev [1:1.2.2-4 -> 1:1.2.3-13]
The following packages will be upgraded:
apsfilter [7.2.6-1 -> 7.2.6-1.1] base-files [3.1.2 -> 4]
[ ~70 packages "will be upgraded]
xml-core [0.09 -> 0.09-0.1]
The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
latex-cjk-all [4.7.0+cvs20061019-2] libcompress-zlib-perl [1.42-2]
libeel2-2.14 [2.14.3-5] libft-perl [1.2-16] libhtml-format-perl [2.04-1]
lsb-base [3.1-23.2etch1] wbritish [6-2] x-ttcidfont-conf [25.1]
99 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 5 to remove and 762 not upgraded.
Need to get 152MB of archives. After unpacking 57.5MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] Would download/install/remove packages.
#
> I suspect that your attempt to upgrade python broke your system. If you
> are not an expert with Debian, it is best to stick with a single
> distribution (e.g. "stable") rather than to mix distributions (e.g.
> "oldstable"+"stable").
I was expecting that in using a package manager, it would simply do the
Right Thing, without me having to worry. Again, I think the problem for
me is that the meaning of "stable" has changed from "sarge" to "etch".
Presumably this was a deliberate choice of the Debian team, on the
assumption that most people would be upgrading as early as possible
anyhow. Is there a symbolic link (or something similar) in the Debian
archive, something like "sarge" -> "oldstable", that I could use here in
place of "stable"?
> One way to solve this problem would be to modify your
> /etc/apt/sources.list to contain only Sarge ("oldstable") sources and
> update aptitude. Then, using aptitude's interactive interface, remove
> those "obsolete and locally created packages" that seem to depend upon
> non-Sarge resources. Anything from "obsolete and locally created
> packages" that seems to be breaking the system should be removed. After
> that, confirm that aptitude is happy by doing another "aptitude -sV
> upgrade." Aptitude should not
Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, Daniel!
On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 07:57:45PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 07:22:24PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> was heard to say:
> > #Broken: 12 Will free 16.7MB of disk space DL Size: 6215kB
> > . Using the aptitude command `find broken', it reports, amongst others,
> > vim as being broken, giving as further details:
> > * vim depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.6-6)
> > * vim depends on libncurses5 (>= 5.4-5)
> > * vim depends on vim-runtime (= 1:7.0-122+1etch3)
> > However, vim works just fine (I'm using it to write this email).
> First possible problem: aptitude uses "broken" as a shorthand for
> "broken *after I apply what you've told me to do*".
Ah! Thanks!
[ ]
> > #
> > So, I try to update aptitude itself (this will surely help me with my
> > other problems ;-). To begin with, I start aptitude, and type ":" on
> > each of the 8 lines ("--- Security Updates", ., "--- Tasks") in the
> > hope of clearing out dross.
> btw, to upgrade just aptitude it might be easier to run
> "aptitude install aptitude".
OK. But I'm a coward. Where in all the documentation would I find a
statement that doing this won't irreversibly hose my system, especially
when I'm scared that it's already in a fragile, possibly inconsistent
state? What, exactly, does "install" mean? These aren't rhetorical
questions. I've looked in the aptitude man page (sarge version from
2005). This is something I dislike about package managers - they demand
complete trust on an all-or-nothing basis. Or have I missed something?
What I would like is "test-download" facility that would prompt me for a
directory, and put the new version of the package there WITHOUT TOUCHING
MY CURRENT SETUP. I could then make sure it works properly before
committing myself to an irreversible and potentially catastrophic update.
> > I now find aptitude in the list (Successively ing "Upgradeable
> > Packages", "Admin", "Main", "Aptitude"). It gives a list of
> > dependencies, but doesn't say whether it is the current aptitude
> > (0.2.15.9) or the newest one (0.4.4-4) which so depends. Which is it?
> > Several of these are shaded red.
> The one shown by default is the default candidate version (the
> version number on the far right). If you pick a particular version,
> that one is shown.
OK.
> > I type "u", and it tells me it's connecting to several hosts
> > (presumably to ask them if they're awake), and then that it's
> > downloaded 0B in 21s at 0B/s. Is this an error message, or an
> > expected status message? What is it trying to download here?
> When you hit "u", aptitude checks for updates to the list of available
> package versions. It doesn't download anything if there aren't any
> changes.
OK.
[ ]
> Is there a reason you're still using sarge?
Yes. Installing Debian is (was?) so painful that I really can't face the
drudgery again at the moment. I've only had about 2 years use out of
sarge so far. I started installing sarge in earnest the day after my old
PC died. After 20 days of work (when I didn't have a day job) I was
finally able to use it reasonably. I have kept a detailed log of the
process so that it won't be as bad second time round, but even so I'm not
looking forward to it.
I hit problem after problem after problem - nothing big or dramatic, but
each one took 2 to 4 hours to resolve, first tracking down the relevant
documentation, trying it out, sometimes with new kernel parameters,
sometimes even rebuilding the kernel. To be fair, not all the problems
were with Debian; it took a few days to determine that my ISP wouldn't
connect to my modem at 56kbaud, but was fine at 33kbaud. A typical
problem was that my X-Windows came up in 800 x 600 resolution - not nice
on a 17" CRT. It took an evening to search through the many
documentation sources, some of them not in easily searchable form, to
track down /etc/X11/XF86Config-4, make the appropriate adjustment and
test it.
When I (finally) got a DSL connection, it took me 7 days of evenings to
get my Ethernet card working. There doesn't seem to be a HOWTO for
network configuration. When something networky is not worky, typically
nothing happens, and one has to wade through /var/log/messages and
friends. On the rare occasions an error message does appear, it's
something like "No route to www.debian.org" rather than the more helpful
"Couldn't read file /etc/resolv.conf&q
Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, again! On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 10:48:02AM +, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > To know what is going on with your system, we would need to see your > > /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/apt/preferences files. > #/etc/apt/sources.list: > # > deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib > deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib > deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib > # [ ] > Hmm. I don't really feel that it was me that did the mixing. :-) > However, I take the point. I'll try the suggestion you gave me up above > (putting "oldstable" into sources.list), and then report on what > happened. My /etc/apt/source.list now looks like this: # #deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ oldstable main contrib #deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ oldstable main contrib deb http://security.debian.org/ oldstable/updates main contrib # When I now start aptitude, I get a plethora of errors with the following form: W: Couldn't stat source package list ftp://ftp.de.debian.org oldstable/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.de.debian.org_debian_dists_oldstable_main_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory) It seems I've misunderstood the format of /etc/apt/sources.list. Looking at source.lists's man page, however, it seems OK. If I connect to the ftp server in the error message, ftp.de.debian.org, then cd to debian/dists, I see this: lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 5 Apr 12 21:15 Debian3.1r8 -> sarge lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 4 Feb 16 20:51 Debian4.0r3 -> etch -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 449 Apr 12 18:16 README drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp 4096 Feb 16 14:58 etch drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp78 Jun 20 08:23 etch-m68k drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp 69632 Jun 20 08:22 etch-proposed-updates drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp78 Jun 20 08:24 experimental drwxr-xr-x 17 ftp ftp 4096 Jun 20 08:23 lenny drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp78 Jun 20 08:23 lenny-proposed-updates lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 5 Apr 8 2007 oldstable -> sarge lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp22 May 15 2007 oldstable-proposed-updates -> sarge-proposed-updates lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp21 Apr 8 2007 proposed-updates -> etch-proposed-updates drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp 4096 Apr 12 19:08 sarge drwxr-xr-x 5 ftp ftp78 Jun 20 08:22 sarge-proposed-updates drwxr-xr-x 19 ftp ftp 4096 Jun 20 08:24 sid lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 4 Apr 8 2007 stable -> etch lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp21 Apr 8 2007 stable-proposed-updates -> etch-proposed-updates lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 5 Apr 8 2007 testing -> lenny lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp22 Apr 8 2007 testing-proposed-updates -> lenny-proposed-updates lrw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 3 May 13 2006 unstable -> sid Here, "stable -> etch" and "oldstable -> sarge" seem to be of equal status. This is making me feel stupid; what stupid mistake have I made in my source.list? -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, Eduardo! On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 01:40:55PM -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote: > Alan Mackenzie escreveu: > >My /etc/apt/source.list now looks like this: > ># > >#deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib > >deb ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ oldstable main contrib > >#deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib > >deb-src ftp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ oldstable main contrib > >deb http://security.debian.org/ oldstable/updates main contrib > ># > >When I now start aptitude, I get a plethora of errors with the following > >form: > >W: Couldn't stat source package list ftp://ftp.de.debian.org > >oldstable/main Packages > > > > (/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.de.debian.org_debian_dists_oldstable_main_binary-i386_Packages) > > - stat (2 No such file or > > directory) > >[...] > >Here, "stable -> etch" and "oldstable -> sarge" seem to be of equal > >status. This is making me feel stupid; what stupid mistake have I made > >in my source.list? > None, I'd say. Have you run aptitude update? I have now! I think I understand the error message now - it parses as "couldn't stat [the] source package list [for] ftp://ftp.de.debian.org oldstable/main ['s] Packages [, which should be on your Debian system at] (/var/lib/._Packages)." I'd read the message as meaning that /var/lib/apt/...-i386-Packages couldn't be found on ftp.de.debian.org - the first part of the message creates that mental context. And the last bit of the message (which I didn't quote above) which said something like "You may want to update the package lists." was not referring to the contents of the file /etc/apt/source.list (which I thought at first), is certainly not talking about a package called "lists", but actually means "You may want to run the `update' command in aptitude.". Phew! After running the update command, I now have a sanely working aptitude again. Thanks! -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, Daniel! On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 08:54:55PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: [ ] > Just to be a little more clear, you can find out exactly what aptitude > thinks by examining the status flags on the left-hand side of the > package list. Normally packages have flags like this: > pi package-name ... > The two characters on the left say what the current (p) and planned (i) > states of the package are. "p" here is for "purged" and "i" is for > "installed". You can find a complete list in the online help; of > particular interest for you is the "B" state, "broken". I bet that the > flags on "vim" were something like: > iB vim ... > which means that vim is currently installed, and will be broken by the > current set of planned actions. Cheers! That's appreciated, because I'm sure I'll remembert this through the next time I'll be using aptitude, possibly in several months. > Now more information than you probably want. ;-) [ snipped, but read with thanks. ] > > > Is there a reason you're still using sarge? > > > > Yes. Installing Debian is (was?) so painful that I really can't face the > > drudgery again at the moment. I've only had about 2 years use out of > > sarge so far. > I'm sorry it was such a pain. (rest of rant snipped) > > In the real world, nobody I know has got any sort of GNU/Linux > > installed and working in a few days. Most have tried and given up > > after a weekend or two, going back to a Microsoft system. Those few > > who have managed have, like me, endured weeks of drudgery. Only on > > internet blogs do I read "Wow!" reports about how it works perfectly > > an hour and a half after inserting the installation DVD. > Well, my first Debian installation was from a pile of floppies, so I'm > not going to be able to comment intelligently on how hard or easy today's > process is. :-) That appears somewhat evasive. Installing the bootstrap from DVD, and "installing" the desired set of packages, whether from DVD or over the internet takes a trivial amount of time - at most an evening. It's the "little" adjustments which then take weeks - like getting debian to access USB sticks (though that's probably painless now), or a laser printer on the parallel port (took me a whole day, including getting an output filter going). I suspect there's an Emperor's New Clothes effect here - it takes _everybody_ weeks to get a GNU/Linux system properly set up, but nobody (apart from me ;-) has the courage to be the first to admit it. So, how long did it take you from making that pile of floppies to having a satisfactory Debian? What units of time would the answer be in, even? # Anyhow, I've got my aptitude working again, and I'm profoundly grateful for the help you and others gave me. The essential problem was having "stable" instead of "sarge" in my sources.list. Sometime or other, I will be upgrading - maybe to lenny when it comes out rather than etch. I've tried out a few other distributions (including ubuntu), but didn't like them much. I even tried out FreeBSD, but it became obvious I'd have a lot to unlearn and relearn there. So, I'll probably be sticking with Debian, at least for some while. There didn't seem to be a python >=2.4 in the sarge repository, so in the end I downloaded the source code tarball from the python site and built it myself. (Then I downloaded and built the application I really wanted which needed this python.) Again, thanks! > Daniel -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Total confusion with aptitude. Help, please!
Hi, Daniel! On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 09:14:10PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 03:00:52PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > was heard to say: > On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 08:54:55PM -0700, Daniel Burrows > wrote: > > > > In the real world, nobody I know has got any sort of GNU/Linux > > > > installed and working in a few days. Most have tried and given > > > > up after a weekend or two, going back to a Microsoft system. > > > > Those few who have managed have, like me, endured weeks of > > > > drudgery. Only on internet blogs do I read "Wow!" reports about > > > > how it works perfectly an hour and a half after inserting the > > > > installation DVD. > > > Well, my first Debian installation was from a pile of floppies, > > > so I'm not going to be able to comment intelligently on how hard > > > or easy today's process is. > > :-) That appears somewhat evasive. > Only in the sense that I don't want to get into a pointless > argu^H^H^H^Hdiscussion about the totally subjective question of whether > installing Debian is "hard" for two different people with different > skills and requirements (namely you and me), especially when I don't > work on the installation system and I can't fix any of your problems > for you. OK, fair enough! > Moreover, it's been ten years since I installed Debian for the first > time and I don't trust my memory to tell me precisely what the > conditions were at the time or how long it took me. A few things I do > remember having trouble with, like getting basic access to email (which > required configuring an MTA), getting X working, and getting a printer > hooked up, are so easy nowadays that it's barely worth remarking on > them. These all caused me moderate or severe pain with sarge in 2006. Maybe it's only the first debian installation anybody does which is so hard. I hope so! Anyhow, it seems time to finish this thread, now. Thanks for all the comments. > Daniel -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
