I experienced very similar problems on my two different Debian installations. I am using the apt method with the dselect user interface. Here is my list of sources:
------------------------------------------------------------------------- [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list # Use for a local mirror - remove the ftp1 http lines for the bits # your mirror contains. # deb file:/your/mirror/here/debian stable main contrib non-free # deb file:/mnt/cdrom/debian slink main contrib # See sources.list(5) for more information, especial # Remember that you can only use http, ftp or file URIs deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian woody main contrib non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US woody non-US/main non-US/contrib non-US/non-free deb http://spidermonkey.helixcode.com/distributions/debian woody main ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dselect offered to remove the following 142 packages: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following packages will be REMOVED: adduser aide alien alsa-source apel bitmap-mule bsdmainutils bug-buddy cdrdao codecommander console-apt custom-mule cvs debconf debhelper debview dh-make dia eeyes emacs20 emacsen-common enscript esound esound-clients esound-common gaim-gnome gdm gedit ghex ghostview glade-gnome gmc gnapster gnome-applets gnome-apt gnome-bin gnome-card-games gnome-chess gnome-control-center gnome-core gnome-games gnome-gataxx gnome-glines gnome-gnibbles gnome-gnobots2 gnome-gnometris gnome-gnomine gnome-gnotravex gnome-gtali gnome-gturing gnome-gv gnome-help gnome-iagno gnome-iconedit gnome-mahjongg gnome-media gnome-panel gnome-panel-data gnome-pim gnome-pim-conduits gnome-same-gnome gnome-session gnome-stones gnome-terminal gnome-utils gnome-xbill gnomehack gnomeicu gnotepad+ gnucash gnumeric gnuplot gpgp grdb gs gs-pdfencrypt gtop guitar gv haskell-mode hevea hylafax-client hyperlatex latex2html libcapplet0 libesd0 libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 libglade-gnome0 libgnome-pilot0 libgnome32 libgnomemm1.1 libgnomeprint6 libgnomesupport0 libgnomeui32 libgnorba27 libgnorbagtk0 libguilegnome0 libguilegtk0 libpaperg libsdl1.0 libsmpeg0 libwine libzvt2 lilo linuxlogo lprng lynx lynx-ssl magicfilter memprof mpage mule2-bin mule2-support mule2-wnn netpbm octave octave2.0-emacsen pan phalanx pi-address pidentd poster pstoedit pstotext psutils realplayer rep-gtk-gnome rwho rwhod task-tex telnetd tkhylafax wine xchat-gnome xemacs21 xemacs21-bin xemacs21-mule xemacs21-mule-canna-wnn xemacs21-support xserver-xfree86 yacas yatex 73 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 142 to remove and 3 not upgraded. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I cancelled. This morning, I tried again on my desktop system and found dselect much more reasonable. It only offered to remove 3 packages, with good solid conflict reasons. I repeated the INSTALL step many times until it stabilized with one overwrite error concerning xlibs_4.0.2-1_i386.deb. Outside of dselect, I went to /var/cache/apt/archives and executed dpkg --force-overwrite --install xlibs_4.0.2-1_i386.deb Back in dselect, I had to run the SELECT step (even though I didn't change my selections) to get the dependency checking up to date, then INSTALL once more, and now I seem to be back in synch. Based on the experience above, I thought that there had been some bug in the updates files from Debian or from Helix, which was corrected in the last day or two. But, I tried the process again on my laptop system, and found the problem reduced but not eliminated. dselect offered to delete 52 packages, most of which appear to be fine, and some of them rather important: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following packages will be REMOVED: alien arena autoconf automake base-config console-apt debhelper dlint doc-base dpkg-dev dpkg-ftp dpkg-perl dpkg-repack eperl fttools fvwm-common fvwmconf gmc gnome-apt gnome-faq gnucash i18ndata kernel-package latex2html libdigest-md5-perl libft-perl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tagset-perl libi18n-langtags-perl libjcode-perl libmime-base64-perl libnet-perl libnet-telnet-perl libtext-format-perl liburi-perl libwww-perl mgp perl-5.005 perl-5.005-suid perl-tk rpm task-dns-server task-gnome-desktop task-gnome-net task-tex tetex-lib xemacs21 xemacs21-basesupport xemacs21-bin xemacs21-mule xemacs21-support xpm4g The following NEW packages will be installed: ae cpp-2.95 electric-fence esound-clients g++-2.95 gcc-2.95 libbz2-1.0 libdps1 libfreetype6 libkpathsea3 libnss-db libperl5.6 libregexx0 libsasl-modules libtool libunicode0 libvorbis0 libxaw-dev libxaw6 libxaw7 memprof mtr-tiny perl-5.6-base perl-doc perl-modules stl-manual swig transfig xlibs xlibs-dev xpdf xserver-common-v3 xserver-xfree86 xutils 246 packages upgraded, 34 newly installed, 52 to remove and 4 not upgraded. 2 packages not fully installed or removed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The laptop system was initially installed from a TuxTops CD, which apparently provided a few packages customized by TuxTops, with version numbers higher than Debian unstable. I have already backed out of some of those, but perhaps some other peculiarities of the TuxTops configuration are still involved. Anyway, I'm afraid to let dselect INSTALL run on the laptop until I understand the problem better. Mike O'Donnell -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
