Hi Folks, First, Seasons Greetings to all.
Now: Recently, on a Debian system which (from the time-stamps on the earliest user files) seems to have been Debian Etch (April 2009, though I have been following the updates), I installed the xfmail MUA which I have habitually used on a much older system. It was hnot available in the Etch repository, so I searched the web and found and used the deb package
xfmail_1.5.5-3_i386.deb 17-Jan-2006 22:35 951K
and it all seemed to go in; and also, it seems to work. So far so good.
Today, however, I wanted to install ffmpeg. First, synaptic tells me that there is a broken package (which is not identified, but on later evidence it seems that it is xfmail). Then, when I search for ffmpeg and mark it for installation, I am told it xfmail will be removed (and that there are other problems).
So I turned to apt-get, with the following results:
[1] # apt-get install ffmpeg Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies. ffmpeg: Depends: libavdevice52 (>= 3:20080706) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libimlib2 but it is not going to be installed xfmail: Depends: libglib1.2 (>= 1.2.0) but it is not installable Depends: libldap2 (>= 2.1.17-1) but it is not installable E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
Well, despite what it says about xfmail dependencies, xfmail works! Now to see what "Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages" gives:
[2] # apt-get -f install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies...Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: libswscale0 libmcrypt4 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. The following packages will be REMOVED xfmail 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 2597kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n Abort.
So it still wants to remove xfmail. So what about the library libimlib2, say, that ffmpeg depends on?
[3] # apt-get install libimlib2 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these: The following packages have unmet dependencies. xfmail: Depends: libglib1.2 (>= 1.2.0) but it is not installable Depends: libldap2 (>= 2.1.17-1) but it is not installable E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
So it still stubs its toes on xfmail, but now without any indication that the installation of libimlib2 (and therefore of ffmpeg) is really interfered with by xfmail. It just seems to want to get xfmail out of the way before it does anything else.
I do not want to remove xfmail. So is there a way to persuade apt-get (or any other Debian installation program) to ignore xfmail and get on with what it has been asked to do?!!
Or am I misunderstanding the workings?
With thanks (and if you solve it you will make my Christmas Happy)! Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 25-Dec-09 Time: 21:39:40 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------