Need help!

[Malvazar]

Okay so I don't know how I did it, but I somehow managed to crash my gui interface by installing wine. When ever I start the computer now I don't get the usual graphical interface I just get a terminal like screen for login. It was working perfectly fine right up untill I installed wine using the following commands.

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sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine
sudo apt-get install winetricks

Please help I really don't want to have to reinstall the system AGAIN because of this......

[M51]

You broke your system by installing from an Ubuntu repository.

To fix it:

1) Purge all the packages from that repository, then remove the repository.

2) Reinstall the missing Debian packages.

3) Repeat to yourself five times: "Debian is not Ubuntu. I will not do that again"

[Malvazar]

okay so how do i do that exactly? I'm not exactly a termial expert.

[\hbar]

Here's my proposition: open a new file with emacs or nano, or whatever you prefer, call it ppa-filer (or whatever you want to call it). Write the following lines inside:

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#!/bin/bash

for package in `dpkg -l | awk '{print $2}'`;do
  from_ppa=`apt-cache policy "$package" | grep -c "ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa"`
  if test "$from_ppa" -gt 0;then
    echo "$package"
  fi
done

then run

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/bin/bash ppa-filter

Let me explain a bit: this is a shell script (i.e. a sequence of terminal commands that the shell will execute one after the other) that does the following: it loops over all the installed packages (listed by "dpkg -l | awk '{print $2}'"), then checks whether the package is from the ubuntu ppa by asking apt-cache to list the information and search for "ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa" within that information. It then stores a number, that is larger than 0 only if the package is from the ubuntu ppa in tha variable $from_ppa. It then checks whether $from_ppa is larger than 0, and if so, it prints the name of the package.

So this script will only tell you which packages are from the ppa. The idea is that if there are just a couple of them, you can decide which ones you don't need and remove them by hand using apt-get purge, and which ones you need which you must remove, and then reinstall from the debian repository (using apt-get install after removing the ppa from your sources.list).

If there are too many packages to be dealt with by hand, you can automate their removal and replacement by debian packages, although you should ONLY do this IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING. You can cause serious borking of your system by automating the removal and installation of packages.

[\hbar]

PS: you can also automate your punishment by running

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for i in {1..5};do echo "Debian is not Ubuntu. I will not do that again";done

[dasein]

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 72#p533072

[Malvazar]

I guess I'm just going to have to reinstall the os again because none of that made any sence to me. But thanks for trying anyways. I just don't understand technical talk at all.

[\hbar]

That sounds more reasonable... Good luck, and be more careful with repos in the future.

[dasein]

I guess I'm just going to have to reinstall the os...

Good plan. But be forewarned: if you pollute the re-install with non-Debian sources, you'll end up right back in this same place, with a broken system, mysterious "updates," etc.

If you're not sure what any of this means, then maybe spend a little time learning about distros, releases, etc. before you proceed.

[M51]

As a non-technical user, your best bet is to avoid messing with your sources.list file or running anything that includes "add-apt-repository". Stick to the software in the default repositories. If you find you absolutely need software that is only available elsewhere, then it may be easier for you to switch to a distro that has it rather than deal with eventual chaos of pulling from multiple repositories. If that means moving from Debian to another distro, that's fine. Use whatever works for you.

[stevepusser]

Exactly why were you trying to get Wine from an Ubuntu PPA? If you were trying to get a newer version, there are some people that are building newer versions of Wine that won't bork your system.

[stevepusser]

I'm a little confused, since add-apt-repository isn't a Debian package. Are we sure OP isn't running *buntu?

Based on the 1289 updates, it was the hideous spawn of Wheezy, Ubuntu, and some number of PPAs.

[llivv]

I'm a little confused

Me too!
thanks for clearing that up for me, and giving me a reason to read some more of this thread.
what can I say, it's been a long week.

/hba
thanks for posting the scrip and loop lesson. I would have missed it if not for wizards post.
I already have a list of current installed packages - 1967 in all - yes it's sid / gnome
and will be messin around with the loop to get a better handle on how they work.

I think I also found the reason my gpu crashed, but still only guessing
I removed one of my ext4 mount options auto_da_alloc a few weeks / months ago.
I thought I'd read in the mount manual that is was now an ext4 default.
Long story short, I put auto_da_alloc back in fstab with journal_async_commit and bootup looks much cleaner
then it has in several weeks.