As several others have reported, the texlive system (which may have been installed from experimental in my case) has gotten into a bad state in which I can neither remove, install, nor reinstall it.
The other reports focused on dvipdfmx. With some help from the texlive maintainers, I was able to purge that package. For others that seems to have been enough, but I'm still stuck. These problems prevent aptitude from working even for unrelated packages. When I try to remove texlive with aptitude I get dpkg: error processing preview-latex-style (--remove): Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstall it before attempting a removal. (Reading database ... terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::logic_error' what(): basic_string::_S_construct NULL not valid Aborted (This apparent aptitude crash is also mentioned in previous mails, and may explain some of how things got in such bad shape). I've also tried dpkg removal, but it too refused to act. Attempted reinstalls produce the message that I must purge first (details at bottom). Does anyone have suggestions? At the moment I'm trying to purge texlive from the system, in hopes that a new install will then clear things up (though apparently that wasn't the case for one poster). One suggestion in earlier threads was to use forcing options with the package tools, but I'm reluctant to do so because I don't understand the implications well. Additional info: Bug 384945 has my report of this problem; a log attached at the end gives the details of attempted repairs. # dpkg -l preview-latex-style Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Description +++-==============-==============-============================================ pHR preview-latex- 11.83-2 LaTeX style files for editor embedded previe #aptitude -q reinstall preview-latex-style results in the proposed installation of many packages (which I accepted), and then Unpacking texlive-doc-base (from .../texlive-doc-base_2005-2_all.deb) ... Upgrade from experimental versions are not supported! Please purge all texlive packages before installation. dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-doc-base_2005-2_all.deb (--unpack): subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1 (similar messages for other packages). So purge says I must reinstall, and reinstall says I must purge. The same reinstall also said The following packages are BROKEN: texlive-context texlive-doc-en texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-generic-recommended texlive-metapost texlive-pdfetex texlive-pstricks tipa -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]