[ALUG] apt-get error: Dynamic MMap ran out of room

[sagr]

On Tuesday, July 24, 2007 8:30 AM, Brett Paker wrote:
> What's the contents of the /etc/debian_version file? ;)

zebra:/etc# cat debian_version
3.0

> MMap is memory allocation, not disk space - add the following like to
> /etc/apt/apt.conf (create the file if it doesn't exist):
>
> APT::Cache-Limit "20000000";
>
> And that should get it working.

Excellent!  Thanks for that! apt-get now runs!  Unfortunately however
apt-get has now hit another problem when trying to install geneweb:

zebra:/etc/apt/apt.conf.d# apt-get install geneweb
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  coreutils debianutils e2fslibs e2fsprogs initscripts iso-codes libacl1
  libattr1 libblkid1 libc6 libc6-dev libcomerr2 libdevmapper1.02 libselinux1
  libsepol1 libss2 libuuid1 linux-kernel-headers lsb-base mktemp mount
sysv-rc
  sysvinit sysvinit-utils tzdata
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libnss-db locales
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  coreutils e2fslibs geneweb initscripts iso-codes libacl1 libattr1
libblkid1
  libcomerr2 libdevmapper1.02 libselinux1 libsepol1 libss2 libuuid1
  linux-kernel-headers lsb-base mktemp sysv-rc sysvinit-utils tzdata
6 packages upgraded, 20 newly installed, 2 to remove and 562  not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/18.0MB of archives. After unpacking 31.0MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
E: This installation run will require temporarily removing the essential
package e2fsprogs due to a Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop. This is often
bad, but if you really want to do it, activate the
APT::Force-LoopBreak option.
E: Internal Error, Could not early remove e2fsprogs

I tried adding "APT::Force-LoopBreak" to the config file (as it seems to be
suggesting) but I still get the same error message:

E: This installation run will require temporarily removing the essential
package e2fsprogs due to a Conflicts/Pre-Depends loop. This is often
bad, but if  you really want to do it, activate the
APT::Force-LoopBreak option.
E: Internal Error, Could not early remove e2fsprogs

It is a bit worrying that it says "this is often bad".  Do you think perhaps
apt-get is trying to install too many things at once or is it the geneweb
package itself which is causing problems?

> Other than serving files, does that
> machine do anything?

It is a machine I inherited so I do not know exactly how it is set up but it
is the companies main Samba File Server.  I think it also does clever things
with Spam Assassin and acts as a IMAP server for all the companies incoming
mail.

> It might be worth setting aside a (few) hours to
> upgrade it to a recent version of debian.

Bearing in mind how central it is to the running of the company I am very
reluctant to upgrade it's OS in case I mess up it's configuration or break
something especially as apt-get does seem to be suggesting that the geneweb
package is available for our existing version of Debian.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get around my "E: Internal Error,
Could not early remove e2fsprogs" apt-get error?

Sagr.