[Gllug] Debian Sarge security updates

John Edwards john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk
Thu Sep 28 23:36:21 UTC 2006


On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 11:54:44PM +0100, Chris Bell wrote:
> Hello,
>    I have done a security update to Sarge using "aptitude" which included an
> update to the 2.6.8 kernel. All appeared to go well after the reboot, so I
> continued to update some other boxes.
>    I have just checked for any further security updates, and each box shows
> a couple of updated packages available plus a large number of important base
> packages to be removed. I can understand the old kernel being listed for
> deletion, but not all the rest, more a series of updates to later versions.
>    I quit aptitude and rebooted again, but no change.
>    I normally use a local apt-proxy mirror, so quit aptitude again, edited
> the sources.list to include an official mirror site, re-booted and ran
> aptitude again, no difference.
>    I feel that I should hold the majority of the packages, remove the old
> kernel, then repeat the process.
>    Has anyone else found a problem?
> 
>    Thanks for any advice.

Things have been fine here with the kernel upgrade on Debian 3.1 
(sarge) and Ubuntu 5.10 & 6.06.


Which packages are you being prompted to update and which to remove ?

Aptitude should show you a reason why they are being uninstalled, 
either in the bottom half of the screen or as a section header in 
the top half when you hit "g".

Do you get the same behaviour in dselect ?


There are a few random things I can think of:

Aptitude does have a system where if package B was automatically 
installed to satisfy the dependencies of package A, then when A 
is uninstalled then you will be prompted to uninstalled B.

Some recent 2.6 kernels in the backports repository drag in a lot 
of new packages including a different init system, which means 
uninstalling the old one and breaking some dependencies. Any 
reference to backports or other extra repositories ?


Rerunning '/usr/sbin/apt-setup' may get you a cleaner sources.list 
file.


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#---------------------------------------------------------#
|    John Edwards   Email: john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk    |
|                                                         |
| A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion |
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