Done in by apt-get upgrade

**rozen** · 02-23-2004, 04:08 AM

This is not the first time I have been hurt by apt-get update.

Last night, I did an 'apt-get update' followed by 'apt-get upgrade'. When I rebooted, I couldn't. Among the upgrades was a lot of stuff dealing with the Xserver - XFree86, kdm, many fonts, and assorted bits and pieces. Well I get a far as the welcome window and when I select my userid, supply the password, and 'Go'; the screen turns blank and a few seconds later I am back at the welcome wiindow. Same thing when I tried to login as root. I did manage to login in console mode and proceeded to backup everything in my home directory and /usr/local.

I usually do the 'update and upgrade' thing every weekend. I use the same sources.list that came with Knoppix. It has the usual suspects - security, stable, testing, unstable, and a bunch of strange ones for mozilla, xfree86, etc. In the past I have upgraded stuff only to find that one package or other had stopped working. So where is the quality check??? Some people have told me to stick to stable and testing; others have said that for knoppix one really needs those strange entries. Any thoughts would be welcome.

I figure that at the very least, I should have a backup procedure that that would allow me to back out an update. So my first question is "Does anyone have such a backup script that only saves the things that need to be saved?" and my second question is "What directories would need to be saved?" I would guess that they include '/etc' , '/sbin', '/bin', '/usr' . Is it reasonable to try protecting oneself? Is there no way to back out bad updates? They will occur in the best of planned situations.

I tried another 'update - upgrade' cycle to no essential benefit. Next, I will do a dist-upgrade. I have also ordered a new Knoppix disk and if I am still X-less when it arrives, I guess I will reinstall Knoppix. My guess is that I am dead until then.

**sciallo** · 02-24-2004, 04:21 AM

Same here! Same exact situation, I'm surprised not to find more people with the same problem.

I've been using a HD install of knoppix for quite a while and it's been in production now. I'm dead in the water and really don't want to go through reinstalling if I don't have to. I'm hoping it's going to magically get fixed by a new apt-get upgrade as soon as they figure something was screwy there. Am I hoping invane?

Are we the only two ppl with the problem? (Again it gets to KDM but xfree restarts when trying to login - all this right after an apt-get upgrade where a bunch of X libs and devs aren't installable)

**nmcphillips** · 02-24-2004, 05:07 AM

Don't feel like you guys are all alone. Exact same thing happened to me tonight. Question is what do we do now? Anybody have any answer?

**sciallo** · 02-25-2004, 02:40 AM

I'm still hoping it will get fixed by another apt-get update/upgrade soon, it looks like it has to do with packages that can be updated because other packages need certain files they try to replace... seems to me like they rolled out XF86 updates before they were all ready

My video card uses the XFree86(mga) server and it complains about the card not having enough memory on the upgraded hd install. Good thing for Live knoppix

that's what I'm using right now.

When I get some time I'd like to try slapping a different video card in there and seeing if I can get X to work again.

By the way, is there a GOOD/fool proof config program for X (like the good old RedHat Xconfigurator) for Debian?

**mikekgr** · 02-25-2004, 10:01 AM

Dear Sirs, one quick work arround:

edit your /etc/X11/Xsession file

at the first lines you will find : set e (Or something similar. I am at work now not debian linux here ) you should comment out this line as follow

# set e

restart, all should be works now....

Am I right ????

Regards
Mike

**rozen** · 02-26-2004, 08:13 PM

Seems to work. Thanks!

Only difference was I found the line not in Xsession but in Xsession.dpkg-dist which I corrected according to your suggestion and moved it to Xsession. I believe that I am back in business.

Thanks again

**aay** · 02-26-2004, 08:23 PM

Interesting. What is "set e"?

**mikekgr** · 02-26-2004, 08:56 PM

Dear Friends,
I feel happy to read that your problem gone !

AAY, Sorry but I dont know what this set -e does. I just nottice this change between old and new xsession settings so I tried to revert back and works !

Best Regards

**A. Jorge Garcia** · 02-26-2004, 09:15 PM

I can't apt-get update, upgrade or install on one PC I tried to apt-get install quake2! Don't ask, my kids at home were bored. Anyway, when I try to apt-get anything it says it can't and I must fix it with dpkg --configure -a. This thing keeps getting stuck downloading a none-existent file from www.blizzard.com and fixes nothing! What can I do about this?

TIA,
AJG

**sciallo** · 02-27-2004, 12:11 AM

I can't wait to get to that computer and try!

Still, what about the rest? did it only happen to me? I can't use apt-get anymore because certain updates won't install and I end up with the use "apt-get -f install" suggestion from apt-get, and that fails. I'm stuck in dependancy hell (one of the things I thought I liked about apt-get is that supposedly it keeps you out of there - Now I'll be afraid to use it, wrong upgrade and you're done!)

Should I get in as described back files up and reinstall or wait for apt-get to mysteriously fix the whole thing by itself?