First: I come from stackoverflow - I'm a programmer, not a sysadmin. Please be understanding of my ineptitude with these matters; I'll try to be as precise as possible (retagging and re-titling may be appropriate).
I have a dependency situation which I can't just figure out on a Debian Etch system.
I've been called to do some maintenance work on a php app; since I needed the locales
package, I tried what I thought the easiest way: apt-get install locales
, which failed because of unmet dependencies with a virtual glibc package. From my understanding, this was caused by mixed sources (all packages were already upgraded)
I asked aptitude install locales
if he could fix things, and he did (some packages were downgraded), but aptitude itself was removed.
There's no discussing: that was a dumb thing to do on my part. But the server is still happily running (thanks Debian!), so the situation is not critical.
The question is: the package situation does not look resolved. If I try to reinstall aptitude, this is what I get:
lsrl:~# apt-get install aptitude
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
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:
aptitude: Depends: libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6-3.11
E: Broken packages
If I try to install libapt:
lsrl:~# apt-get install libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6-3.11
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6-3.11 is a virtual package provided by:
You should explicitly select one to install.
E: Package libapt-pkg-libc6.3-6-3.11 has no installation candidate
If I try to reinstall apt:
lsrl:~# apt-get --reinstall install apt
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reinstallation of apt is not possible, it cannot be downloaded.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
My sources:
lsrl:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r4a-etchnhalf _Etch-and-a-half_ - Official i386 NETINST 20080804-22:00]/ etch main
#deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r4a-etchnhalf _Etch-and-a-half_ - Official i386 NETINST 20080804-22:00]/ etch main
deb http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
# deb http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
# deb-src http://ftp.it.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main
deb-src http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main
This is so similar to what was happening before with glibc that I have reason to believe that there are still some mixed sources/packages... are there?
Is there any way I can get all this to work properly?