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 ------------------------------
Ted Harding wrote: [...]
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.
Happy new year, everyone.
http://packages.debian.org/etch/xfmail suggests it should have been in the etch repository, but the link to development information (PTS) says that there was a 1.5.5-4 series and a 1.5.5.dfsg.1 series, but then http://bugs.debian.org/523914 says it was removed by request of the Quality Assurance team at version 1.5.5.dfsg.1-0.1 because it was out of date, orphaned (no-one was willing to maintain it), depended on a library which was to be removed and included a release-critical bug.
In short, installing that package unmodified will probably break the system and hinder upgrades.
The ideal solution would be to update the package. The last homepage is http://xfmail.slappy.net/ but that is even more out of date than the etch package. The last listed project maintainer I found was http://www.cfreeze.com/ but he doesn't mention xfmail on his site. It looks pretty unmaintained. Any hero in ALUG want to pick it up?
[...]
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?
I'm pretty sure that imlib is part of the same general family of GTK related libraries as glib and that the upstream numbers on the end of the package names increased in step from 1 to 2, so it is probably not simple to have glib1.2 (required by xfmail) installed at the same time as imlib2, although I can't see the exact reason for that.
You could try installing the two missing xfmail dependencies, but the "not installable" warnings make me wonder whether there's some problem in /etc/apt/sources.list - are you sure it's etch? Check the /etc/debian_version file - I think etch was 4.0.*
Hope that helps,
[See at end]
On 30-Dec-09 19:11:47, MJ Ray wrote:
Ted Harding wrote: [...]
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.
Happy new year, everyone.
http://packages.debian.org/etch/xfmail suggests it should have been in the etch repository, but the link to development information (PTS) says that there was a 1.5.5-4 series and a 1.5.5.dfsg.1 series, but then http://bugs.debian.org/523914 says it was removed by request of the Quality Assurance team at version 1.5.5.dfsg.1-0.1 because it was out of date, orphaned (no-one was willing to maintain it), depended on a library which was to be removed and included a release-critical bug.
In short, installing that package unmodified will probably break the system and hinder upgrades.
The ideal solution would be to update the package. The last homepage is http://xfmail.slappy.net/ but that is even more out of date than the etch package. The last listed project maintainer I found was http://www.cfreeze.com/ but he doesn't mention xfmail on his site. It looks pretty unmaintained. Any hero in ALUG want to pick it up?
[...]
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?
I'm pretty sure that imlib is part of the same general family of GTK related libraries as glib and that the upstream numbers on the end of the package names increased in step from 1 to 2, so it is probably not simple to have glib1.2 (required by xfmail) installed at the same time as imlib2, although I can't see the exact reason for that.
You could try installing the two missing xfmail dependencies, but the "not installable" warnings make me wonder whether there's some problem in /etc/apt/sources.list - are you sure it's etch? Check the /etc/debian_version file - I think etch was 4.0.*
Hope that helps,
Thanks for the considered reply, Mark!
In fact, I have now checked, and it turns out it is Debian Lenny. The confusion arose because I tried to identify the Debian version by looking at the time-stamp of files in /usr (created when it was installed) and then checking against the dates of the Debian versions. ( http://www.debian.org/releases ). April 2009 came out as Etch on that basis, but even so I may have misunderstood something.
But in fact I have now found the DVD I installed it from, and it's Lenny. The reason is that it came with the May 2009 Linux Format (which I bought in April)! So I suppose it may have been a "pre-release" of Debian 5 Lenny.
That being said, I have in fact had xfmail running very happily on another laptop which really is Etch (installed September 2007), so you are quite right about xfmail being available for that (at that time).
In view of the above (i.e. Lenny not Etch), would you have any additional or alternative comments?
With very many thanks, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 30-Dec-09 Time: 20:07:43 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
Ted Harding wrote:
On 30-Dec-09 19:11:47, MJ Ray wrote:
Ted Harding wrote: [...]
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.
[...]
In view of the above (i.e. Lenny not Etch), would you have any additional or alternative comments?
The ideal solution would still be to update the package.
A second-best solution would be to rebuild the packages from etch on lenny and try to install them, which should be similar to backporting (there must be a HOWTO but I didn't find it just now - basically apt-get source --build packagename) but a little easier.
I think that most of xfmail's dependencies were listed as "weak" on one of the sites I read yesterday - that may be why it works even without the apt dependencies being satisified. A poor third-best solution (if xfmail runs OK at the moment) would be to use "equivs" to Circumvent Debian package dependencies but it's been ages since I used that, so I'm not going to suggest commands which might break your system!
Hope that helps,
-
MJ Ray -
Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk