On Thursday 05 November 2015 10:13:34 The Wanderer wrote: > On 2015-11-05 at 09:59, David Baron wrote: > > On Thursday 05 November 2015 09:47:12 The Wanderer wrote: > >> On 2015-11-05 at 09:41, Lisi Reisz wrote: > >>> On Thursday 05 November 2015 14:26:07 David Baron wrote: > >>>> Attempt to apt-get --reinstall install base-files will produce > >>>> error "cannot be downloaded." In Synaptic, the Debian symbol > >>>> does not appear with the package. Maybe it is only on stable? > >>> > >>> https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=base-files > >> > >> Perhaps more usefully: > >> > >> What does 'apt-cache policy base-files' say on your machine? Exact > >> output, please; don't just give part of the response, > >> copy-and-paste the entire thing, the way I did in my previous mail. > > > > ~$ apt-cache policy base-files > > > > base-files: > > Installed: 1:2.0 > > Candidate: 1:2.0 > > > > Version table: > > *** 1:2.0 0 > > > > 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status > > > > 9.5 0 > > > > 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages > > 500 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages > > That sheds some light on things. > > In your earlier sources.list, the lines for the Kali repos were > commented out. That means that any package versions which were pulled > only from those repos will show as being available only locally, with no > repo source for re-download. > > I suspect that when the Kali repos were enabled, something resulted in > your upgrading base-files, and since the Kali repos had a version number > with an epoch (the '1:' at the beginning of the version number) their > version trumped the one from the official repos. > > _IF_ you want to revert base-files to the official Debian version, > abandoning the Kali variant, you should be able to do it with the > following command: > > apt-get install base-files=9.5 > > > Note that if you do that, you probably won't be able to get back to the > current state, unless either A: you have the appropriate .deb file > cached (e.g. in /var/cache/apt/archives) or B: you un-comment the Kali > repos in sources.list and apt-get update again. > > However, since you presumably (based on your having started this thread > in the first place) don't want the Kali packages anyway, you probably > won't consider this a bad thing.
Did the job! Called it a "downgrade."