apt & synaptic problems ...

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 2:59 am

Has anyone ever encountered an error of the type

Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. Unable to lock the download directory.

A few days ago I upgraded KDE from 3.1.4 to 3.2 with Synaptic.
Apt downloaded a lot of stuff, selected packages to remove, packages to upgrade and other packages to install.
Everything went well until the actual installation part.
Synaptic froze, I waited for about 45 minutes and it still didn't respond, so I killed it.

After that whenever I tried to launch Synaptic I got a weird error about missing widgets and being unable to lock down the download directory.
So I did and apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and after that everything was fine again.

I saw someone with a similar problem on linuxquestions so this is why I ask.
I didn't tell him to try and run apt-get from a terminal window but I'm about to do that now.
Anyway, if someone has a clue, feel free to share, I'd like to be able to solve that problem when I'm gonna upgrade to KDE 3.3 or whatever

Linux Frank · Post by **Linux Frank** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 8:37 am

What Version OS are you using.

It sounds as though the original problem was the RPM lockup issue that Voidmain offers some assistance with in his tips section.

Sounds like something I had problems with on RH 8 or 9. I did a repair installation from Synatptic, as I recall that cured it (although I don't think my update was a s important as a KDE upgrade).

I am more and more convinced that the more technical, involved and complex a task is the more likely it should ONLY be performed in CLI.

But you are all fine now, right?

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Thu Mar 18, 2004 9:58 am

I don't know if it was related to the rpm lockup issue (I run RH9), because I didn't have rpm installation or removal issues after receiving the error message, just that Synaptic refused to start up.
But I'm ok now, thanks for asking

I only asked here about that because I was a little puzzled by the similarity of that guy's problem and the one I had had, and just in case I run into something like that again I'd like to be able to solve it

divali · Post by **divali** » Mon May 17, 2004 8:05 am

YES. my synaptic just stopped working. I uninstalled and then exactly the same thing happens. I click the icon or use Run and there it is struggling for about half a minute before crashing out. What to do?

fedora core 1.
divali

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Mon May 17, 2004 9:49 am

You could try to start it from within a terminal, to see what kind of error message you get.
I just had it redo the same on me a couyple of days ago, I switched to a terminal window, ran apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and after that I was able to use synaptic again.
But I find myself using the GUI less and less often, only when I desperately want to install something new and only to look into the available software

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Mon May 17, 2004 10:33 am

I like "apt-cache search <text>" to search the repositories for packages. I "rarely" use synaptic, which reminds me, there doesn't seem to be a synaptic yet for FC2.

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Tue May 18, 2004 2:09 am

I like "apt-cache search <text>" to search the repositories for packages.

Ok, but that implies that you know what package you're looking for.
Sometimes I find my system way too stable and feel the need to install something new and unknown

... and then I browse through synaptic's list, it's clear and there are descriptions and dependencies listings, quite useful.

Void Main · Post by **Void Main** » Tue May 18, 2004 3:10 am

Yes, it implies *roughly* that you know what you are looking for. It searches more than just the name and description of the package. I too like to fire up synaptic once in a while and browse. :)