KDE uninstalled itself!!

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

I am using debian, and the other day as I was doing an apt-get update/upgrade, there were a lot of packages that were held back because of dependencies. So I tried to installed each one of the packages by itself and one of the packages uninstalled a lot of kde packages, meaning packages that start with the K. I am currently using the default debian manager. I don't have a problem with this manager, but I like KDE better. When I do a "whereis KDE," I don't get a response. How can I find out if KDE got uninstalled completely and how can I install it back again.

Thanks for the help,
pitupepito

 

[drag]

You can use the dselect command to make a ncurses-based menu that is a front for apt-get...
I has a list of every package avaible from debian... Its a lot but you can do a search thru it by using the / button to find the kde packages... It'll indicate along the left column wiether a package is installed or not.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

dpkg -l will show what packages are installed.

The official opinion is that you should use dselect when doing heavy duty package management, it would have prevented this problem, but then again, simply paying attention to what apt is doing also would have. You gotta make sure and keep an eye on what dependancies a package might uninstall when you uninstall it, apt can be sneaky

 

[pitupepito2000]

Thanks for the help drag, but I don't know which packages to install. What I want is to install the KDE manager and get things back to normal. Also BingBongWongFooey when I do a dpkg -l and then grep that to kde I do get some packages, but for some reason now KDE window manager doesn't work anymore.

Please help!!
pitupepito

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: pitupepito2000
Thanks for the help drag, but I don't know which packages to install. What I want is to install the KDE manager and get things back to normal. Also BingBongWongFooey when I do a dpkg -l and then grep that to kde I do get some packages, but for some reason now KDE window manager doesn't work anymore.

Please help!!
pitupepito

I would say find the "main" kde package, whatever it may be named (I don't know, kde-base maybe), and do apt-get install --reinstall <packagename>. Also note that kde is not a window manager, however it does include one

And as far as finding what packages you need, apt-cache search is your friend. Worst case scenario, you could just run tasksel and have it install a "standard desktop" or whatever (or does that only include gnome? don't know..)

 

[drag]

Ya also if you use dselect and try to install anything with the kde base as a dependancy it'll prompt you to install all of it's dependances... Just use / to find kde-base(?) and go ahead and install it. It'll go thru and make sure you have everything you need, plus if it will indicate which packages are needed and which are just optional dependances...

also I forget what is the command to start kde actually.. if you are at the command prompt type kd and then hit tab a couple times.. hopefully you'll find the command to start kde... It won't work from the command line, it'll complain about a missing display.

If you did a major upgrade of kde like from kde 2 to 3 then your gonna get a lot of uninstalled packages...

The .xinitrc folder in your home directory controls the aspects of how your X session starts... if you do a

ls -a ~/

it'll show the hidden files... In linux adding the . before the filename hides them

it'll show all the hidden files in your home directory.. If .xinitrc is missing it will just use the default script found in the /etc/X11/xinit/ folder. I like to copy the generic xinitrc file to my home directory and then edit it to setup my defualt WM for that user....

cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

just then remove the old wm command and replace it with the one with that starts KDE..

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

When I try to do the apt-get install of "kdebase" it won't let me because of dependencies, and then when I try to do an apt-get install for those packages that didn't get install, I can't do it because these files depend on one another.

Please help, I don't know what to do,
pitupepito

 

[pitupepito2000]

Please help me!!!

 

[drag]

hey, relax.... I would like to help you, right now but I am at work, and I cut off access from my home's computer from the outside world, I caught somebody trying to mess around with my servers, I 've been going to increase my security, but I've been busy lately. So be pateint...

Also try to use the dselect menu Its just a advanced way to interact with apt-get. it realy is very nice, just follow the directions, you know + too add packages.

get to the select section so you can get a list of packages, find the kdebase package (use the / button to start a search if you don't want to look thru the 10,000 or so programs) once you find it hit the + then enter. It will caculate the dependances for you and prompt you to make sure that you realy want to install them... make sure those are all selected, then press enter again, repeat this untill all the dependancies have been completed and your back to the list of programs... then you should hit the space bar or something to get out there (i forget which button)... then procede to install everything...

There is a problem with apt-get when it is dealing with a system that is half stable and half current, so this may take a bit to figure out...

do read the man files, they give you a idea of what to do. read "man apt-get" and "man dselect". I know they are difficult to understand at first, but don't let yourself get intimidated, most of the info in doesn't have anything to do with anything, just scan thru and read carefully anything that may be relevant

 

[drag]

oh..

run apt-get update

and apt-get upgrade


again just to make sure everything is ok

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: pitupepito2000
Please help me!!!

First of all I'm going to assume that you're either running sid or unstable. In that case the dependency that you're missing is libvorbis0a. Now the only problem is that libvorbis0a conflicts with libvorbis0 even though they both have different library names. Since a lot of the packages in debian (especially the KDE ones) depend on libvorbis0 this has caused a ton of programs to break. They've also been slowly adding the kde4 packages to the distro, which haven't yet been updated for libvorbis0a. This is old news to me since I did the same thing as you and broke my debian install on thursday.

My advice to you would be to either wait (and put all kde packages on hold) or to downgrade to testing (if you have a lot of packages installed I wouldn't do this. Hmmm, I just checked and apparently the problem isn't fixed, I suppose this means that debian unstable's KDE will probably be broken until next weekends BSP (bug squishing party). Hopefully this time the developers will do a nice clean sweep, because with over 800 bugs in the current unstable fixing 50 is not going to make much of a difference. Personally I think it was rather dumb to jerk a library out from under users' feet without leaving behind some kind of compatibility package :frown:. Oh well, when you are running debian unstable you should be very careful with those upgrades.

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

I actually by doing intensive google search I found that I you go to the "/var/cache/apt/archives." and then you do an "dpkg --force-all -i <package.name.>" your dependency problem gets solved. Now I have back all of my kdebase packages and files, but I still haven't figured out how to set the kde3.1 window manager to default. What I have is the one that comes with debian and I am trying to run this computer in a hosehold were people like to have consistency in their computing experience.

Please help!!,
pitupepito

 

[Spyro]

apt-get install kdm

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

When I do an apt-get install kdm it tells me that I have it already installed. But when I boot to linux I get my old login manager, but after that KDE doesn't start for some reason. I looked on google and one person said to change the contents of the "/etc/X11/defautl-display-manager." The contents of this file are "/usr/bin/kdm/"

Please help me,
pitupepito

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

Now that I get my old login manager . When I choose KDE as the window manager to start, when I click ok after entering my password X restarts for some reason back to the login manager, the only option that seems to work in the login manager is the default.

Please help me,
pitupeito

 

[pitupepito2000]

please help me, please

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: pitupepito2000
please help me, please

Well, it sounds like you have a problem with your kde window manager. Since they (the developers) have started adding kde4 libraries and stuff, so you might have a broken kde install (well apparently you do).

There are a few things that you can do now:
1. use apt-get to fetch the latest update and hope that they've fixed it
2. wait for a week until the next Bug Squishing Party
3. Try to manually patch things up using dselect or synaptic
4. Its also possible that your kde install actually is working, and that the binary has not been properly configured (i.e. kdm has been launching the wrong kde). In that case you could try dpkg-reconfigure kdm

 

[Spyro]

Hmmm, I just thought of something. The libvorbis dependency problem has probably caused your kde binaries to be removed. In that case, to restore your kde binaries (and I'm going to assume that you have both libvorbis0 and libvorbis0a installed) I recommend you do an "apt-get install kde". That should fetch the missing files and correct any other kde problems.

 

[pitupepito2000]

Hi,

Thanks for the help, a friend came ove and help me set up kde

 

[Spyro]

Sweeet . Its always great to get a helping hand from a higher power. Its a shame I'm usually that helping hand . Seriously though, I would think that you should be a lot more careful with your apt-get updates in the future.