Hi, readers,

I'm a sarge user, and seem to have locked my system from using apt-get
any further due to some tricky dependency error. It all occurred during
a routine ` apt-get update && apt-get upgrade all ` when the command
ended with an error that went something like:

menon:/home/falling# apt-get upgrade all
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libperl5.8: Depends: perl-base (= 5.8.4-2.2) but 5.8.4-2 is installed
perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.8.4-2.2) but 5.8.4-2 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

After this, I tried to do an ` apt-get -f install ` to fix the
dependency mis-mash, and this resulted in another error:

menon:/home/falling# apt-get -f install
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
perl-base
The following packages will be upgraded:
perl-base
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 229 not upgraded.
8 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/747kB of archives.
After unpacking 172kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 61212 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace perl-base 5.8.4-2 (using
.../perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement perl-base ...
dpkg: error processing
/var/cache/apt/archives/perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/perl/5.8', which is also in package
gimp-perl
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


SO, there seems to be some error happening when apt-get tries to upgrade
my perl distribution from 5.8.4 to 5.8.4-2.2. I've tried to remove the
perl distro, but this is impossible since a whole slew of other apps,
including apt-get itself I believe, depend on it. I can't install any
other packages with apt-get now either, since it always dies at this
dependency error no matter what I throw at it. I need to fix this error
to start using my apt-get again, and as it currently stands, I'm totally
lost.

So where I do begin? If anyone knows apt-get fairly well I'd really
appreciate any advice on things I can try to correct this.

thanks.

b

"boz tr0n" wrote in message
news:nt%5d.47649$Ot3.36726@twister.nyc.rr.com...
Hi, readers,

I'm a sarge user, and seem to have locked my system from using apt-get
any further due to some tricky dependency error. It all occurred during
a routine ` apt-get update && apt-get upgrade all ` when the command
ended with an error that went something like:

menon:/home/falling# apt-get upgrade all
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libperl5.8: Depends: perl-base (= 5.8.4-2.2) but 5.8.4-2 is installed
perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.8.4-2.2) but 5.8.4-2 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

After this, I tried to do an ` apt-get -f install ` to fix the
dependency mis-mash, and this resulted in another error:

menon:/home/falling# apt-get -f install
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
perl-base
The following packages will be upgraded:
perl-base
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 229 not upgraded.
8 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/747kB of archives.
After unpacking 172kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 61212 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace perl-base 5.8.4-2 (using
.../perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement perl-base ...
dpkg: error processing
/var/cache/apt/archives/perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/perl/5.8', which is also in package
gimp-perl
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/perl-base_5.8.4-2.2_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


SO, there seems to be some error happening when apt-get tries to upgrade
my perl distribution from 5.8.4 to 5.8.4-2.2. I've tried to remove the
perl distro, but this is impossible since a whole slew of other apps,
including apt-get itself I believe, depend on it. I can't install any
other packages with apt-get now either, since it always dies at this
dependency error no matter what I throw at it. I need to fix this error
to start using my apt-get again, and as it currently stands, I'm totally
lost.

So where I do begin? If anyone knows apt-get fairly well I'd really
appreciate any advice on things I can try to correct this.

thanks.

b

This happened to me a while ago and I ended up fixing it using (may have
to
swap the flags around a bit) something like "dpkg -i
package.deb --force-overwrite".

HTH
--
Jon