-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Mon, Apr 04, 2016 at 11:51:56AM +0200, Pierre Frenkiel wrote: > On Mon, 4 Apr 2016, Brian wrote: > > >In the dpkg manual you'll find 'confnew' and 'confdef', apt-get accepts > >dpkg paramters. aptitude probably does too. > > > what is the exact syntax? > I tried: > apt-get --force-things confold dist-upgrade > E: Command line option --force-things is not understood
Ah -- the "things" in --force-things is a syntactic metavariable[1] :-) To really find out what "things" you can force, you can ask your dpkg. Mine says so: | tomas@rasputin:~$ dpkg --force-help | dpkg forcing options - control behaviour when problems found: | warn but continue: --force-<thing>,<thing>,... | stop with error: --refuse-<thing>,<thing>,... | --no-force-<thing>,... | Forcing things: | [!] all Set all force options | [*] downgrade Replace a package with a lower version | configure-any Configure any package which may help this one | hold Process incidental packages even when on hold | not-root Try to (de)install things even when not root | bad-path PATH is missing important programs, problems likely | bad-verify Install a package even if it fails authenticity check | bad-version Process even packages with wrong versions | overwrite Overwrite a file from one package with another | overwrite-diverted Overwrite a diverted file with an undiverted version | [!] overwrite-dir Overwrite one package's directory with another's file | [!] unsafe-io Do not perform safe I/O operations when unpacking | [!] confnew Always use the new config files, don't prompt | [!] confold Always use the old config files, don't prompt | [!] confdef Use the default option for new config files if one | is available, don't prompt. If no default can be found, | you will be prompted unless one of the confold or | confnew options is also given | [!] confmiss Always install missing config files | [!] confask Offer to replace config files with no new versions | [!] architecture Process even packages with wrong or no architecture | [!] breaks Install even if it would break another package | [!] conflicts Allow installation of conflicting packages | [!] depends Turn all dependency problems into warnings | [!] depends-version Turn dependency version problems into warnings | [!] remove-reinstreq Remove packages which require installation | [!] remove-essential Remove an essential package | | WARNING - use of options marked [!] can seriously damage your installation. | Forcing options marked [*] are enabled by default. Please, be careful and take the warning seriously. Regards [1] a stilted way of saying that it is a placeholder - -- tomás -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlcCN20ACgkQBcgs9XrR2kYXrQCfWKmRG1PI7pe3g3h58hxvTz7n xqAAnRSncQY5Q7BF0J7VSDWdwK3qeJlF =E9+H -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----