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Help reinstalling Debian-Gnome

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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Jorge2910
Posts: 1
Joined: 2017-05-10 15:49

Help reinstalling Debian-Gnome

#1 Post by Jorge2910 »

Hi,
I made a pretty big mistake while testing out some packages on Stretch, I ended up removing a whole bunch of core gnome libraries and dependencies and messed up the dependency tree of apt-get. I am trying to revert back and install these core packages again but I am pretty stuck with errors. This is what I have so far:
If I run apt-get install gnome or gnome-core or any other package):

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Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 gnome : Depends: gnome-core (= 1:3.14+3) but it is not going to be installed
              Depends: libgtk2-perl (>= 1:1.130) but it is not going to be installed
my sources.list file:

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deb http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie main
deb-src http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie main

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie-updates main
deb-src http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie-updates main
output of apt-get update:

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Ign:1 http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian jessie InRelease
Get:2 http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian jessie-updates InRelease [145 kB]                     
Ign:3 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                                               
Get:4 http://security.debian.org jessie/updates InRelease [63.1 kB]                                                        
Hit:5 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable Release                                 
Hit:6 https://deb.nodesource.com/node_6.x jessie InRelease                                      
Hit:8 http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian jessie Release                                             
Get:9 http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/main Sources [193 kB] 
Get:11 http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/main amd64 Packages [403 kB]
Fetched 805 kB in 0s (1,126 kB/s)  
Reading package lists... Done
output of apt-cache policy:

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Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 https://deb.nodesource.com/node_6.x jessie/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Node Source,n=jessie,l=Node Source,c=main,b=amd64
     origin deb.nodesource.com
 500 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable/main amd64 Packages
     release v=1.0,o=Google, Inc.,a=stable,n=stable,l=Google,c=main,b=amd64
     origin dl.google.com
 500 http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian jessie-updates/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=stable-updates,n=jessie-updates,l=Debian,c=main,b=amd64
     origin mirror.it.ubc.ca
 500 http://security.debian.org jessie/updates/main amd64 Packages
     release v=8,o=Debian,a=stable,n=jessie,l=Debian-Security,c=main,b=amd64
     origin security.debian.org
 500 http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian jessie/main amd64 Packages
     release v=8.8,o=Debian,a=stable,n=jessie,l=Debian,c=main,b=amd64
     origin mirror.it.ubc.ca
Running apt-get -f install and apt-get upgrade yields nothing (0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.).
I don't want to do a fresh reinstall unless it's the last resort, is there any way to grab a list of the core packages and install it through apt-get? What else can I do?

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Re: Help reinstalling Debian-Gnome

#2 Post by arochester »

testing out some packages on Stretch
Your sources list shows that you are using Jessie, not Stretch. What have you done?

What happens if, in a Terminal you input: tasksel

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dasein
Posts: 7680
Joined: 2011-03-04 01:06
Location: Terra Incantationum

Re: Help reinstalling Debian-Gnome

#3 Post by dasein »

Jorge2910 wrote:I made a pretty big mistake while testing out some packages on Stretch...
Bottom line: You've borked your system. As the Wiki points out in at least three places, and as confirmed by literally dozens of threads here, you cannot safely mix Testing and Stable.
Jorge2910 wrote:I don't want to do a fresh reinstall...
You don't really have a choice. Your system is now in a kind of limbo, neither fully Stable nor fully Testing. Such a system is sometimes called a FrankenDebian.

Image

Reinstall Stable and stop mixing repos.

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stevepusser
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Re: Help reinstalling Debian-Gnome

#4 Post by stevepusser »

If you haven't installed too many libraries and such from Stretch, aptitude might be able to recover your system. Remember that it will offer many solutions, one at a time, so just hit "n" if you don't like the first one--and read what it's offering to do before agreeing to it! If it doesn't work, you haven't lost anything except some time. If it wants to downgrade packages as part of the solution, that's what we're looking for.

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aptitude install gnome
MX Linux packager and developer

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furquan
Posts: 48
Joined: 2017-05-10 11:57
Location: India

Re: Help reinstalling Debian-Gnome

#5 Post by furquan »

Jorge2910 wrote: my sources.list file:

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deb http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie main
deb-src http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie main

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie-updates main
deb-src http://mirror.it.ubc.ca/debian/ jessie-updates main
You're saying that you're on Stretch but your sources.list file tells that you're on stable. That means you've obviously broken the system by mixing Stretch and Jessie packages. I think the best course of measure here is to do a clean install, make a backup of /home and do a fresh install of Debian.

But since you don't want to do that you can try this:
# Switch to a TTY and apt purge gnome. Purge any leftover packages too (apt autoremove --purge), if that helps.
# Edit sources.list so that you can upgrade to Testing (i.e. replace all occurrences of "jessie" with "testing").
# apt update
# apt dist-upgrade
If everything works fine after this, then you can install gnome:
# apt install gnome

If you want to stay on stable, I don't think that is possible without doing a clean install. Testing isn't as bad as it sounds, packages break rarely and if you're discreet in updating and read the bug-reports carefully you should be fine.
The source code for the kernel, library, etc. should fit on one diskette. Sources for the GNU utilities will vary (and will be big). The sources to GNU emacs will take at least 3 disks. -- Theodore Ts'o, 1992 (distributing the first Linux disks)

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