On Sun, 26 Mar 2023 Jesper Dybdal wrote:
Yesterday, I upgraded Buster => Bullseye.
Release notes for Debian 11 (bullseye)
Upgrades from Debian 10 (buster) :: section 4.8 Obsolete Packages
https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#obsolete
This morning, I got a mail from unattended-upgrades, which said:
Packages with upgradable origin but kept back:
Debian stable:
guile-2.2-libs w3m
and
Package guile-2.2-libs is kept back because a related package is
kept back or due to local apt_preferences(5).
Package w3m is kept back because a related package is kept back or
due to local apt_preferences(5).
What does this mean?
My guess is that you have packages from Buster still installed, which
are now obsolete (ie, not packaged for Bullseye). I speculate that
these obsolete packages depend on guile-2.2-libs and w3m, and that
this somehow (*waves hands around vaguely*) causes guile-2.2-libs and
w3m to be held back.
I "guess" and "speculate", and I confess I don't really know.
(But in the remainder of my reply, I foolishly pretend that I do.)
I have what I believe to be a clean install, I have never used
apt_preferences,
The message says
...because a related package is kept back OR due to local
apt_preferences(5).
That is, kept back (for whatever reason), OR because of
apt_preferences. It need not have anything to do with apt_preferences.
and until now, I had never heard of guile or w3m.
$ apt-cache show guile-2.2-libs w3m
And I don't quite understand why I have them installed at all.
$ apt-mark showauto | grep -xE 'guile-2.2-libs|w3m'
If they show up in the output of "apt-mark showauto", they were
automatically installed (I'd guess in order to satisfy dependencies,
recommends, etc)
My sources.list contains only bullseye and bullseye-backports.
Today it does.
But the day before yesterday, I gather it was Buster's Last Stand.
What do I do?
Two options come to mind.
FIRST OPTION:
From the section of the Bullseye release notes I linked above...
Some package management front-ends provide easy ways of finding
installed packages that are no longer available from any known
repository. The aptitude textual user interface lists them in the
category “Obsolete and Locally Created Packages”, and they can be
listed and purged from the commandline with:
# aptitude search '~o'
# aptitude purge '~o'
I guess you could try that search command above, first. And then if
you don't care about purging the obsolete packages it lists, then I
guess you could purge them, to see if that permits you to upgrade
these two packages that you never knew you had installed, and never
explicitly asked for.
SECOND OPTION:
Since you have no explicit desire for either w3m or guile-2.2-libs,
you could pretend to remove them, and see what your package manager
thinks that entails.
With apt-get, I would do
$ apt-get -Vs remove w3m
and
$ apt-get -Vs guile-2.2-libs
The -s makes it just for pretend, and the -V makes the packages apt
threatens to remove show up in a nice column, instead jammed into one
long hard-to-read row.
If the removals don't look threatening to you, you know what to do.
And if they do look threatening to you, then don't do it for real!
apt list says:
guile-2.2-libs/stable 2.2.7+1-6 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.2.4+1-2+deb10u1]
guile-2.2-libs/now 2.2.4+1-2+deb10u1 amd64 [installed,upgradable to:
2.2.7+1-6]
w3m/stable 0.5.3+git20210102-6 amd64 [upgradable from: 0.5.3-37]
w3m/now 0.5.3-37 amd64 [installed,upgradable to: 0.5.3+git20210102-6]
I notice that the installed versions listed above are in buster. This
seems consistent with them being dependencies of buster packages that
are now obsolete in bullseye.
--
It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been
weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.
-- Gandalf
