apt-get ERROR - Dependency on some other packeges

[Stephen]

Hey,

I installed Knoppix 3.3 on my HD. As a Debian-Like System.

I tryed to install several packeges. But allways, when there is some dependecy of a nother packege, with is not installed, apt-get tells me, it can not continue with the installation, because the other packege should not be installed.

e.g. Mplayer can not be installed because of libavcodec1.
and XFce4 not because of some other packeges.

Does someone has any clue, what that might be?

thx,
Stefan

You have to track down the offending package that can not be installed or the other package it depends upon that is not being installed at the correct version and install that. I would normally start by looking at the output of the warning it tells you what version is to be installed and you will need to have some other version for it to install properly so use apt-cache policy package_name to see where it is coming from:

>$ apt-cache policy libavcodec1
libavcodec1:
  Installed: 1:0.4.8-sarge0.0
  Candidate: 1:0.4.8-sarge0.0
  Version Table:
 *** 1:0.4.8-sarge0.0 0
        990 http://marillat.free.fr testing/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.4.8-0.0 0
        600 http://marillat.free.fr unstable/main Packages

Then in this case if it wanted the version that was in unstable instead of the installed version that I have from testing I would apt-get -s install libavcodec1/unstable or apt-get -s install -t unstable libavcodec1 if things look goood then remove the -s to actually install if it gives you a warning that it needs another package(s) off such version the use the apt-cache policy on them to find out where you need it from and try to install it at the same time on the same command line because both packages you need will most likely be coming from the same branch if any other problems repeat until you get a clean install of the packages.