Hi,

after a longer timeperiod (maybe 2 months?) I just did a dist-upgrate on my sidux machine using smxi. Afterwards I could not login to the KDE Desktop anymore - the login screen appears, but KDE it does not appear in the list of session types. Fluxbox works.

From the smxi log it seems that the following packages were removed: cupsddk-drivers, kde-minimal, kde4-minimal, kdebase, kdebase-workspace, kdebase-workspace-bin, libtag-extras0

Seems like I did not pay enough attention to the upgrade details -
I am running sidux with smxi for some time, and never had any bigger problems ;-)

Could you give me a hint how to fix this with minimal data-loss? Should I just reinstall the packages?

It would also be interesting to know, why this happened. Might something be broken with the dependencies on my PC?

Thanks
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someone reported a kde package version mismatch yesterday, so I assume you lost some core kde packages.



apt was supposed to hold these packages but I guess it's not consistent for everyone.

apparently there is a version mismatch that is not being reliably handled in sid, I'll have to add an smxi hold install feature for that.

<update>Added kdebase-workgroup[-bin/data] version mismatch testing into testing, sorry this hit you, you'll have to wait til those versions are back in sync, or you might try to install: kdebase-workgroup stuff manually using testing sources..

sidux has a hot fix for this, which is by the way why I like to use sidux sources if nothing else on sid installs.

It's unfortunate to see debian slipping even further here, kde version mismatches almost never happened previously, but again, the devs have the right to break packages in sid by definition, so I won't complain about them taking their rights and using them.

Thanks for confirming this, I guess I'll have to start adding in kde version mismatch tests as debian starts to grind down and sid gets more error filled, which is by the way yet another reason to start running testing instead...
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Would it be safe and do-able to change repositories to point to testing instead of unstable and wait until the software versions catch up?
EDIT:
I'm running "sidux 2009-02 Αιθήρ - kde-full - (200907141427)" btw.
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the software versions did catch up a while ago, those kinds of package mismatches only last a few days usually in sid.

Also, I added in smxi hold/install handling for the kde workspace group, if this happens to more kde groups I'll add them in as they occur.
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What I meant was , would it be safe to change unstable repositories to testing and wait until I'm able to dist-upgrade again?

The "testing" versions have to be a bit behind the "unstable" versions don't they? So basically if I change my sources.list from unstable to testing I won't be dist-upgrading much for the coming weeks ...
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changing to testing is a bit harder and requires more knowledge of how to read errors, and I wouldn't do it without running aptitude as well, which also requires a procedure to switch to from apt-get base.

basically you have to reinstall all core packages as packagename/testing to let apt know the system is now running testing, and you have to pin apt to use testing first, as default.

It's not something you should do to switch back and forth, it's a pain and takes months to settle down enough to be considered stable, because there will be apps all over that try to pull in sid stuff.

I do a few sid to testing boxes, but just because I didn't feel like reinstalling and I was curious how it works, it works but requires manual updates over time to really get right. Not all packages in sid are in testing, that's another issue.

It's up to you, it works if you are willing to do it, but I can't really support you since the breaks aren't predictable. But downgrading all core packages, using aptitude, and then never switching back, works fine over time.
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Hmmm, guess I'll have to sit this out and wait for my Sidux box to break eventually, then I'll just do a fresh "testing" netinstall and run smxi on it (I run smxi on a couple of "lenny" boxes here and all is great - except maybe for the flashplugin-nonfree which basically disappeared from the 64-bit repositories).

thanks for the insights though :-)
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well, there's no break currently anyway, but if you plan on reinstalling anyway, just add testing sources, do a dist-upgrade after pinning to testing in apt.conf, using: aptitude or apt-get -testing dist-upgrade or full-upgrade, I think that works sort of.

Removing sid sources could lead to problems eventually though since not everything in sid is in testing.

This works, but it's a conversion process, a fresh testing install, pinned to testing, then maybe now and then with sid packages carefully manually added after you make it, should work very well.
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