X dies on updates

Greetings. I've been using knoppix 3.2 for about a year now on my Compaq 2105us; it's been my favorite linux distro to date. But it is not without challenges. I had tried going straight Debian, but Knoppix has superior hardware detection.

So, I get Knoppix installed on the hdd, but that doesn't give me perl-doc. No problem, apt-get install perl-doc...which fails utterly. So I read through the apt howto and some Debian faqs, where I get the sage advice to try letting dselect just do it's thing. This, in turn, downloads all kinds of stuff and breaks X. The reason I went with Knoppix instead of straight Debian is that Knoppix gets X working right out of the gate, whereas several tries at installing X (including building from source) failed under Debian on this machine.

Back to square one. I am about to re-install knoppix 3.2. Then I'm going to fire up dselect, but this time I'm going to tell it to put all packages on hold. And then I'm going to try to slowly, one app-plus-dependencies at a time, try to get perl-doc.

Unless some kind soul here has a better suggestion. All pointers welcome.

Well on my Knoppix 3.3 it did get alot of other stuff

The following extra packages will be installed:
libdb4.2 libperl5.8 perl perl-base perl-modules
Suggested packages:
libterm-readline-perl-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libdb4.2 perl-doc
The following packages will be upgraded
libperl5.8 perl perl-base perl-modules
4 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 863 not upgraded.
Inst perl-modules [5.8.2-2] (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing) []
Inst libdb4.2 (4.2.52-16 Debian:testing) []
Inst perl [5.8.2-2] (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing) []
Inst libperl5.8 [5.8.2-2] (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing) []
Inst perl-base [5.8.2-2] (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)
Conf perl-base (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)
Inst perl-doc (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)
Conf libdb4.2 (4.2.52-16 Debian:testing)
Conf perl (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)
Conf perl-modules (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)
Conf libperl5.8 (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)
Conf perl-doc (5.8.4-2 Debian:testing)

But it didnt break X server.

Knoppix 3.6 has perl-doc installed.

I don-t know if it is an option to use 3.3 or 3.6, but otherwise the hold trick might do it but
thats a lot of fiddling.

metavoid,

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I figured I could just get a current knoppix disc, but from a "displaying my competence" standpoint that's a real drag. After all, one of the primary "linux-rocks/winDoze-blows" arguments is about updates and installs. If I'm going to make reinstalling my standard approach to fixging things I might as well stay with XP.

Well, I understand your feelings about giving up and reinstall. But keep in mind that knoppix is
somewhat mixed and thats can make things hard to upgrade or install.

But then again. perl-doc is just docs, right?

You did try to download the deb file
and just do

dpkg --install perl-doc.deb

It seems not to try to resolve anything and I used this to install deborphan
without install get-text even it was listed as required. It still worked.

But its properly part of perlbase or something and not a single deb file but you might find it
on the net.

Well, good luck