Richard Kettlewell wrote:

Are you trying to install individual *.deb files that you have downloaded from somewhere, or trying to use an interface such as dselect or apt that tries to resolve dependencies for you automatically?

Using apt-get. "dpkg --audit" - executing this doesn't do anything.

My experience is that mixing 'stable' and 'testing' is more hassle than it's worth; better to pick one and stick with it.

It was more of an idiotic disaster than an intentional thing.

MJRay wrote:

Jenny: I'm getting the error message "C compiler cannot create executables" when trying to compile something.

Is that because you don't have part of the compiler toolchain installed (bin86 and friends)?

I don't think I do - dselect is offering to install an enormous num,ber of things, including bin86. It is asking for the cdrom, which is at home alas, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow. Grrrrr.

try "apt-get --reinstall install libc6" to see if it resolves it

"reinstallation of libc6 is not possible, it cannot be downloaded" I've done apt-get clean, update and upgrade,.

Many thanks to all for suggestions. I'll try dselect again tomorrow when i have the cdrom here and see if that mends its brokenness. Jenny.