[Wylug-help] Debian package confusion upgrade vs dist-upgrade

[Felix Ulrich-Oltean]

Hi

I have a Debian unstable system and I used to happily 'apt-get
dist-upgrade' every now and again to get all the latest versions.  Now
though, if I dist-upgrade it wants to add all this stuff that I
haven't (knowingly) asked for - mainly gnome stuff.  However, if I
only use update, it "holds back" certain packages, like blender which
I'd like to upgrade because it crashes at the moment in certain
instances.

Can anyone help me work out how I may have misled dpkg into thinking I
wanted all that stuff, or why it wants me to have it?  And how can I
just upgrade blender for example if I want to - why is it "held back"?

I've included the output from both commands below.

Thanks for any hints,

Felix.



# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  abiword abiword-common abiword-plugins bind9-host blender build-essential cpp cupsys cupsys-client dhcp-client djvulibre-desktop dnsutils evince g++ gcc gnome-app-install groff groff-base hpijs hpijs-ppds
  hplip hplip-data libaa1 libcairo2 libcairo2-dev libdjvulibre21 libenchant1c2a libgda2-3 libltdl3 libneon25 libneon27 libneon27-gnutls libnss3-1d libsmbclient libsvn1 libx11-6 libx11-dev lynx msttcorefonts
  policycoreutils python-gnome2-extras python-qt4 samba-common smbclient smbfs ssl-cert subversion tuxmath util-linux xserver-xorg-video-ati
The following packages will be upgraded:
  adduser base-files bzip2 dialog emacs21 emacs21-bin-common emacs21-common galeon galeon-common gcj-4.2-base gij-4.2 grub-common guile-1.8-libs iptables laptop-detect libbz2-1.0 libgcj8-1 libgcj8-1-awt
  libgcj8-jar libgda2-common libgda3-3 libgda3-bin libgda3-common liblog4j1.2-java liblog4j1.2-java-gcj libmailtools-perl libmx4j-java libncurses5 libncurses5-dev libncursesw5 libperl5.10 libregexp-java libsane
  libsensors4 libssl0.9.8 libvolume-id0 libwpg-0.1-1 libxslt1.1 lm-sensors lsb-base lsb-release mozilla-venkman mutt ncurses-base ncurses-bin ncurses-term openssl perl perl-base perl-doc perl-modules pm-utils
  sane-utils strace syslinux ttf-dejavu ttf-dejavu-core ttf-dejavu-extra udev x11-common xbase-clients xlibmesa-gl xlibmesa-gl-dev xnest xorg xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all
  xserver-xorg-input-evdev xsltproc xutils xvfb
72 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 50 not upgraded.
Need to get 86.4MB of archives.
After this operation, 172kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.



# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED
  libneon25 libnss3-0d sepolgen
The following NEW packages will be installed
  abiword-help abiword-plugin-grammar abiword-plugin-mathview alacarte checkpolicy cpp-4.3 cups cups-client deskbar-applet dhcp3-client dhcp3-common doc-base evolution-data-server evolution-data-server-common
  freetds-common g++-4.3 gcc-4.3 gnome-about gnome-applets gnome-applets-data gnome-control-center gnome-desktop-data gnome-doc-utils gnome-media gnome-menus gnome-netstatus-applet gnome-panel gnome-panel-data
  gnome-session gnome-settings-daemon gnome-system-monitor gnome-user-guide gnome-utils libalut0 libapm1 libbind9-40 libct4 libdc1394-22 libdjvulibre-text libdns43 libedata-book1.2-2 libedata-cal1.2-6
  libedataserverui1.2-8 libegroupwise1.2-13 libfreezethaw-perl libftgl2 libgdata-google1.2-1 libgdata1.2-1 libgnome-window-settings1 libgnomekbd-common libgnomekbd2 libgnomekbdui2 libgoffice-0-4
  libgoffice-0-common libgpm2 libgweather-common libgweather1 libisc44 libisccc40 libisccfg40 libloudmouth1-0 liblwres40 libmalaga7 libmldbm-perl libmpfr1ldbl liboobs-1-4 libopenal1 libpthread-stubs0
  libpthread-stubs0-dev libqpol1 libqt4-help libqt4-sql libqt4-sql-mysql libqt4-webkit libqt4-xmlpatterns librarian0 libsdl-pango1 libserf-0-0 libsetools-tcl libslab0 libspectre1 libstdc++6-4.3-dev libswscale0
  libtalloc1 libtrackerclient0 libuuid-perl libvoikko1 libwbclient0 libxcb-render-util0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-xlib0 libxcb-xlib0-dev libxcb1-dev libxklavier12 lynx-cur metacity nautilus
  nautilus-cd-burner nautilus-data openssl-blacklist python-beagle python-eggtrayicon python-fpconst python-gmenu python-gtkhtml2 python-gtkmozembed python-sepolgen python-soappy setools totem-mozilla
  ttf-liberation ttf-mscorefonts-installer x-ttcidfont-conf xserver-xorg-video-mach64 xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon yelp
The following packages have been kept back:
  groff groff-base libltdl3 util-linux
The following packages will be upgraded:
  abiword abiword-common abiword-plugins adduser base-files bind9-host blender build-essential bzip2 cpp cupsys cupsys-client dhcp-client dialog djvulibre-desktop dnsutils emacs21 emacs21-bin-common
  emacs21-common evince g++ galeon galeon-common gcc gcj-4.2-base gij-4.2 gnome-app-install grub-common guile-1.8-libs hpijs hpijs-ppds hplip hplip-data iptables laptop-detect libaa1 libbz2-1.0 libcairo2
  libcairo2-dev libdjvulibre21 libenchant1c2a libgcj8-1 libgcj8-1-awt libgcj8-jar libgda2-3 libgda2-common libgda3-3 libgda3-bin libgda3-common liblog4j1.2-java liblog4j1.2-java-gcj libmailtools-perl
  libmx4j-java libncurses5 libncurses5-dev libncursesw5 libneon27 libneon27-gnutls libnss3-1d libperl5.10 libregexp-java libsane libsensors4 libsmbclient libssl0.9.8 libsvn1 libvolume-id0 libwpg-0.1-1 libx11-6
  libx11-dev libxslt1.1 lm-sensors lsb-base lsb-release lynx mozilla-venkman msttcorefonts mutt ncurses-base ncurses-bin ncurses-term openssl perl perl-base perl-doc perl-modules pm-utils policycoreutils
  python-gnome2-extras python-qt4 samba-common sane-utils smbclient smbfs ssl-cert strace subversion syslinux ttf-dejavu ttf-dejavu-core ttf-dejavu-extra tuxmath udev x11-common xbase-clients xlibmesa-gl
  xlibmesa-gl-dev xnest xorg xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-video-ati xsltproc xutils xvfb
117 upgraded, 117 newly installed, 3 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 243MB of archives.
After this operation, 276MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.