debianutils problem (upgrade sarge to lenny)

kaz2100 · 08-10-2007, 09:33 PM

Hya,

I am upgrading my sarge penguin to lenny. Mostly smooth, except for nvidia (xfree86 to xorg) and debianutils.

I edited apt source file, and aptitude update upgrade...

Following error prevents my penguin from going forward.

Code:

Unpacking replacement debianutils ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/debianutils_2.22.1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/sbin/add-shell', which is also in package passwd
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/debianutils_2.22.1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:

Then many packages cannot be upgraded.

Is this a bug? or something else.

I downloaded source code and installed, however, I do not know how to make *.deb package. so did not solve dependency problem.

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Happy Penguins!

basileus · 08-11-2007, 03:01 AM

You said you used aptitude upgrade, right? You should really use aptitude dist-upgrade instead. The upgrade command is meant for upgrading debian stable, where the package dependencies don't change. It is poor at handling changes in the package dependency tree, so some packages just refuse to upgrade.

Anyway, I've been using Debian Testing in the past, but just because of the constant upgrade issues I switched to using Debian Stable mostly. Anyway, what you're experiencing is quite normal when doing such a massive upgrade, even if you use dist-upgrade.

First, uninstall as many packages as possible, especially those that are not in use. When you encounter unresolvable dependency problems use dpkg -r --force-all to remove the offending packages. Just make sure you don't remove any vital system packages. Make sure you have the original, remove packages at hand in case something goes really bad. You can also installing those new packages that refuse to install (with --force-all).