Re: Crossgrade instructions seem broken
There's two approaches I would consider here: If you know exactly which packages you want downloaded, I think you can use "apt-get download" to just download the packages you tell it to, and it will ignore all dependency requirements, and not download any other packages. This would be a partial improvement over using wget. If you want apt to download the packages you ask for and figure out what other packages it should download so that all the dependencies can be satisfied, then you may have to fix your "apt --download-only" invocation. I would try going from > #apt --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 to something like apt --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 dpkg:i386- tar:i386- apt:i386- It seems to me that apt is (ignoring the --download-only at this point of the process) assuming that you are asking to install a _second_ instance of dpkg, a _second_ instance of tar, and a second instance of apt, and deciding that that is not possible/allowed. So telling it explicitly to find a solution that involves uninstalling the i386 versions of those packages may allow it to proceed to the "actually do something" part of the process, where it will notice the "--download-only" part, and download the debs for the packages it decided you need to install, and do nothing for the packages it decided you need to uninstall. I'm not 100% sure about all of this, in part because my experience is with "apt-get" instead of "apt".
Crossgrade instructions seem broken
I'm trying to crossgrade a bullseye system (from i386 to amd64). The machine is headless (with no graphical display and it's also difficult to access a console), so I'm doing it over ssh. In preparation I've switched from systemd to sysvinit (due to the warning on the crossgrade page), and also installed busybox-static:amd64 and have a "busybox ash" shell running (in case of trouble). I'm following https://wiki.debian.org/CrossGrading, but at the step: Crossgrade `dpkg` `tar` and `apt` I get: #apt --download-only install dpkg:amd64 tar:amd64 apt:amd64 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies: apt : Conflicts: apt:amd64 but 2.6.1 is to be installed apt:amd64 : Conflicts: apt but 2.6.1 is to be installed dpkg : Conflicts: dpkg:amd64 dpkg:amd64 : Conflicts: dpkg tar : Conflicts: tar:amd64 tar:amd64 : Conflicts: tar E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages. It seems like perhaps the bookworm version of apt has some extra restrictions about installing other arch binary packages, and won't even download them for me. This is pretty inconvenient. Does anyone know any force- or allow- that will persuade apt or apt-get to do this? I tried --allow-remove-essential. No luck. I'll continue using wget, dpkg and manual dependency resolution. Maybe someone has some clues for me? Thanks, Alex
