Listing Debian Packages Not Fully Installed – Step-by-Step

debiandpkg

This is with reference to "sudo: apt-get: command not found." after removing some packages. This user managed to break his system by installing some packages from wheezy on a squeeze system – not sure why or how. In any case, he has at least two packages which are not fully installed, and are in the state iU (i.e. unpacked only). What is an efficient way to list all packages that are not fully installed, or, putting it differently, partially installed?

This seems like something that might have already been asked, but a quick search did not uncover anything. If it is a duplicate, please close.

Best Answer

From the dpkg man page

  -C, --audit
          Searches for packages that have been installed only partially on your system. dpkg will suggest what to do with them to get them working.

So dpkg -C (as user) may work. However, I can't test this since I don't have any broken packages.

Related Solutions

GRUB2 – How to Check on Which Drives GRUB2 Installed an MBR

The MBR is 512 bytes, so a quick way to see if GRUB is there...

dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 | xxd

That dumps the MBR, I see "GRUB" in mine at byte 0x17F = 383.

dd if=/dev/sda bs=1 count=4 skip=383

When I do that, it prints 'GRUB' followed by the dd output.

You can wrap that in a bash for loop or something to go across more drives. if you don't want to do it manually.

Debian – Trouble migrating from Yum to apt-get

About your requirements, Iceweasel is the supported Firefox derivative (fork), I'm currently running debian as my desktop OS at work and use iceweasel every day, no problem. Gnome3, I think it'll be available on the next stable release, BTW what release are you running? Squeeze? If so I think (IIRC) Wheezy will have it. And finally, about graphics performance/quality, that depends a lot on your graphics card and its driver, but if you think of it like having transparencies, windows closing with fancy effects and so on, you'll need a moderm desktop or compiz (work with gnome2) which I think its available on stable (wheeze).

I have modified a bit your sources.list for wheeze, do you mind to test it and report back?

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze contrib non-free main
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main

deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/updates main

# squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://mirror.cse.iitk.ac.in/debian/ squeeze-updates main non-free contrib

# 3rd party repositories
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free

If you happen to be using wheezy or sid you'll have to change all squeeze ocurrences for the one you're using.

Please, backup your sources.list before replacing it, then test it as follows:

Refresh caches

# apt-get update

Search package

# apt-cache vlc

Install package

# apt-get install <package_name>

If find trouble, please report back with output for those three commands, or at least for the first and last.

Also, if you are already using Wheezy or sid, forget what I said about Gnome3 not being available, it should be there but wheezy is yet to be release and sid is always the development branch.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

GRUB2 – How to Check on Which Drives GRUB2 Installed an MBR

Debian – Trouble migrating from Yum to apt-get

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