Debian Problems

[Ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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'ey there:

  I've spent the last couple days doing a Debian 2.1 -> Debian 2.2 upgrade ,
and I had initially started the upgrade before potato had gone into freeze
and I wonder if the mixup of running apt before _and_ after the code freeze
with a not well defined sources.list would have messed up some
stuff.Moreover, I'm encountering some problems, for which I have no clue as
to what my course of action should be.I'd appreciate any help on what I
should do next, or even pointers to the appropriate docs - I've been sifting
thro' tons of material but unable to find the right doc... really
frustrating feeling , that.

  Check this out :

  0] My apt-get complains as is shown below. Is it okay/advisable to force
the LoopBreak? What should I do, next?

======

pronto:/home/ravi# apt-get upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back
  aalib-bin aalib1 ae amaya auctex bzip2 cbb ctwm diald dpkg-perl dxpc eterm
exim fte fvwm gedit gettext gimp gnuplot guile1.3 ical imagemagick jed jed-common kbd libc6
libmagick4g libmime-base64-perl libnet-perl libpam0g libwww-perl locales login lprng lynx mc mixviews
moonlight most netbase netmaze netstd passwd pdmenu perl perl-base perl-tk phalanx plan ppp ppp-pam
pppconfig procmail-lib procps recode sane scwm shellutils signify slang1 slrn sudo sysvinit tetex-base
tetex-bin tetex-doc tetex-extra timidity tkdesk urlview util-linux w3mir whiptail wmmail
word2x xacc xbuffy xf86setup xmaddressbook xmcd xmcpustate xmgr xpilot 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 83 not upgraded.
pronto:/home/ravi# 

pronto:/home/ravi# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gconv-modules lesstifg libguile4 libmd5-perl libpam0g-util netstd newt0.25 perl xproc 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  alsa-base bootpc cfingerd debconf esound esound-common finger fping fte-xwindow ftp gdk-imlib1
  gettext-base gnome-bin gnome-libs-data icmpinfo itcl3.0 lesstif1 libart2 libasound0.4 libaudiofile0
  libbz2 libesd0 libg++2.8.1.3 libgnome32 libgnomesupport0 libgnomeui32 libgnorba27 libgnorbagtk0
  libguile6 libhtml-parser-perl liblzo1 libnewt0 libopenldap-runtime libopenldap1 libpam-modules
  libpam-runtime libpcre2 libpopt0 librecode0 librplay3 libsane libstdc++2.9-glibc2.1 liburi-perl
  libwrap0 mc-common midentd perl-5.004 perl-5.004-base perl-5.004-doc perl-5.005 perl-5.005-base rdate
  rdist rsh-client ruptime rusers rwall rwho rwhod tcl8.2 tcpd tetex-lib tftp tix41 tk8.2 traceroute
  xpilot-server                 
The following packages have been kept back
  eterm fvwm kbd mixviews moonlight 
76 packages upgraded, 67 newly installed, 9 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/74.8MB of archives. After unpacking 62.1MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]  
E: This installation run will require temporarily removing the essential
package libpam0g 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 libpam0g
pronto:/home/ravi# 

======

  1] I can't play my mp3's anymore.It complains something about my /dev/dsp
- I checked if the speakers were okay, and Yes, I could play the same mp3's
fine on Win98. (It's a laptop)

====
pronto:/cdrom/Songs/Padayappa# mpg123 KIKKU\ ERUTHE.mp3 
High Performance MPEG 1.0/2.0/2.5 Audio Player for Layer 1, 2 and 3.
Version 0.59q (1999/Jan/26). Written and copyrights by Michael Hipp.
Uses code from various people. See 'README' for more!
THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Can't open /dev/dsp!
pronto:/cdrom/Songs/Padayappa# ls -la /dev | grep dsp
crwxrwxrwx    1 root     audio     14,   3 Jan  3 00:46 dsp
crw-rw----    1 root     audio     14,  19 Jan  3 00:46 dsp1
pronto:/cdrom/Songs/Padayappa# 
====

  2] I would like to load AfterStep everytime I go into X - I edited my
~/.xinitrc to read "exec afterstep" but it didn't work. How would I load
whichever wm that I wanted? As for themes, I saw a couple that I liked at
themes.org - how would I "install" 'em, once I download them? I also liked
the screenshots of blackboxwm , and I have it downloaded, ... but I dont
know how to go about using it... Even pointers to the /right/ documentation
would be greatly appreciated. [ I've read the READMEs ... ]

  3] Another interesting phenomenon is that if I keep the external PS/2
mouse connected during boot-up, _only_ the external mouse works after
boot-up, but if I were to connect the mouse _after_ boot-up, I can use both
the touchpad and the external mouse ... It _is_ a touch friendlier if I had
the services of both things,... How would I fix this problem?

  4] Are there any Power Monitor utils under Linux (specifically, Debian)
toward monitoring my Battery/AC Power status as in Windows? I'd like it to
force a shutdown if the Battery Status dipped below 2% or some such - I
remember it would make a "beep!" thingie if the power dipped below some
level - what level, I do not know.

  5] I would like suggestions/recommendations for a choice of a front end
for mpg123 toward adjusting Volume and a mock Graphic Equaliser thingie - I
did a search on 'mpg123' on fm, and boy, It turned up _way_ too many
options, ... so I _do_ know that there _are_ nifty frontends available...
only the options available are too many... so I'd just like the names of the
better packages which I could search on fm and install...

  6] Can someone post their /etc/apt/sources.list for an unstable box ?I'm
going all out to be running _really_ new stuff...and I just need to upgrade
the kernel from 2.0.36 -> latest unstable ... I remember having a
~vincent/whatever in my sources.list for X server upgrades...and so on and
so forth... but I've scrapped debian on that other box for want of space
(for mp3s) ... And contrary to popular belief, [ most certainly _my_
belief, before I started using 2.3.31 on the other box ], I found that the
latest "unstable" is infact stable enough for my use... ;-)

  Here's mine: 

===
pronto:/home/ravi# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US
deb http://samosa.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://samosa.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
pronto:/home/ravi# 
===
  I remember that I had a couple problems in having non-US unstable ...
which is why I removed it... Any suggestions/additions/modifications? 


  7] Specifically to Binand -> Can you post your muttconfig files -
*EVERYTHING* - as in your .muttrc,your color config file,your PGP thingie...
and whatever else. Actually, if it takes too much space, send it to _just_
me so I can put it up on geocities ... My email is ravi@xxxxxxxxxxx - And
thanks.

  Woo, really long email, and I'm now signing off before someone in Chennai
decides to murder me ;-)

  Thanks in Advance.


-- -Ravi "Hoping to make enough $ to attend Bang!inux" Rao.
Sun Feb  6 21:26:36 IST 2000

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