First, some background:
I have a server currently running debian sarge. It was upgraded a few
months ago from woody, which it ran for years. This is a headless
server, so I don't run X on it, but I do occasionally use X client
programs, like, say, display. Or, at least I did. So I need the X libs
and clients and related dependencies installed, and xauth, for tunneling
the X connections over ssh. But since the upgrade to sarge, xauth is no
longer available.
So I did a little searching and discovered that the xauth program is in
the xbase-clients package. So I tried to install xbase-clients, but
dpkg complained that it was trying to overwrite a directory that was in
the xterm package. So I tried to uninstall xterm, but that complains
about a file in the package not existing.
So, as near as I can determine, I need to uninstall xterm, but I can't
uninstall it because it's not installed. And I can't reinstall it,
because it uses a directory that's in xutils, which I also can remove
because it doesn't seem to be installed either.
Here is one of the exceedingly helpful messages I get:
spiderman:/home/jday# aptitude install -f
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
xbase-clients
The following packages will be REMOVED:
xterm
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/2853kB of archives. After unpacking 4014kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
Writing extended state information... Done
(Reading database ... 48227 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace xutils 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14sarge1 (using .../xutils_4.3.0.dfsg.1-14sarge1_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement xutils ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/xutils_4.3.0.dfsg.1-14sarge1_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/X11R6/bin', which is also in package xterm
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/xutils_4.3.0.dfsg.1-14sarge1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Ack! Something bad happened while installing packages. Trying to recover:
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
spiderman:/home/jday#
And:
spiderman:/home/jday# dpkg -r --force-all xterm
(Reading database ... 48227 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing xterm ...
dpkg: error processing xterm (--remove):
cannot remove file `/usr/X11R6/bin/xterm': Not a directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
xterm
spiderman:/home/jday#
Anybody have any idea what I should try next?
Thanks,
Jason
--
Jason Day jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net worldnet dot att dot net
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
-- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9