K. Went with the start over. No probs this time. Noticed that the install-to-flash-disk utility offered me an overlay partition max size of 10.9 Gib, about 1.5 Gib greater than last time. So maybe something had gone wrong from the start last time. I also noticed that the fix-broken-package-dependancies function in Synaptic can, without any notification, reset the release preference in Synaptic as far up as experimental from, say, a setting of oldstable. I suppose that depends on the necessary repositories being included. However it is still a scary possibility for a seriess of hapless and difficult mistakes continuing indefinitely. Furthermore, when switching between Synaptic and apt-get/aptitude, one must remain aware that the release preference in Synaptic is independant from the apt-get/aptitude release setting in apt.conf.d . I hadn't noticed that in Debian. Seems a little trepidatious.