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Hi,

I try to upgrade a box that had been running sarge for quite some time.
This seems to include an upgrade of an upgrade of libc6, which complains
that it needs a 2.6 kernel and suggests to install a proper kernel first.
Now the kernel currently run is indeed 2.4:
/------------------------
webber:/home/kmk# uname -a
Linux webber 2.4.27-2-586tsc #1 Wed Nov 30 21:29:45 JST 2005 i586 GNU/Linux
\------------------------

If I try to install a 2.6 kernel image I get:
/------------------------
webber:/home/kmk# apt-get install -t etch linux-image-2.6.18-5-486
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
binutils: Depends: libc6 (>= 2.6-1) but 2.3.5-12.1 is to be installed
libc6-dev: Depends: libc6 (= 2.6.1-1) but 2.3.5-12.1 is to be installed
linux-image-2.6.18-5-486: Depends: coreutils (>= 5.96) but 5.93-5 is to be installed
Depends: initramfs-tools (>= 0.55) but it is not going to be installed or
yaird (>= 0.0.12-8) but it is not going to be installed or
linux-initramfs-tool
locales: Depends: glibc-2.6-1
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
\--------------------------

The suggested command gets me back to where I came from:
/--------------------------
webber:/home/kmk# apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libc6
Suggested packages:
glibc-doc
The following packages will be upgraded:
libc6
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 325 not upgraded.
5 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/4405kB of archives.
After unpacking 6242kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!
libc6
Install these packages without verification [y/N]? y
(Reading database ... 35941 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libc6 2.3.5-12.1 (using .../libc6_2.6.1-1_i386.deb) ...
WARNING: POSIX threads library NPTL requires kernel version
2.6.8 or later. If you use a kernel 2.4, please upgrade it
before installing glibc.

The installation of a 2.6 kernel _could_ ask you to install a new libc
first, this is NOT a bug, and should *NOT* be reported. In that case,
please add etch sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list and run:
apt-get install -t etch linux-image-2.6
Then reboot into this new kernel, and proceed with your upgrade
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.6.1-1_i386.deb (--unpack):
subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.6.1-1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
\--------------------------


This is my /etc/apt/sources.list
/-------------
deb ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ stable contrib main non-free
deb-src ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ stable contrib main non-free
deb ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ testing contrib main non-free
deb-src ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ testing contrib main non-free
\-------------

Any hint?

---<(kaimartin)>---
--
Kai-Martin Knaak
http://lilalaser.de/blog

[edit]
> Any hint?
>

Did you read the release notes for Etch previous to starting the upgrade?
And, did you follow the procedure in those release notes?

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:15:52 -0700, Rodney wrote:

> Did you read the release notes for Etch previous to starting the
> upgrade? And, did you follow the procedure in those release notes?

<blush>Ok, you got me red handed </blush>
I overestimated the ability of "apt-get dist-upgrade" to deal with this
kind of problems.

What can I do to dig me out of this hole?
Use apt-get with some --force options?
Build a local kernel image from source?
Use the GUI interface of aptitude to manually select what packages to
install?

---<(kaimartin)>---
--
Kai-Martin Knaak
http://lilalaser.de/blog

Kai-Martin Knaak <kmk@lilalaser.de> writes:
>On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:15:52 -0700, Rodney wrote:
>
>> Did you read the release notes for Etch previous to starting the
>> upgrade? And, did you follow the procedure in those release notes?
>
><blush>Ok, you got me red handed </blush>
>I overestimated the ability of "apt-get dist-upgrade" to deal with this
>kind of problems.

Don't worry, apt-get worked nicely for the sarge->etch upgrade on a
number of machines round here, while aptitude cause a lot of work that
eventually came to nothing: IIRC it wanted to deinstall lprng for
installing gthumb; apt-get installed gthumb without such nonsense, so
I went back to apt-get.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:25:39 GMT,
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) wrote:

>> <blush>Ok, you got me red handed </blush>
>> I overestimated the ability of "apt-get dist-upgrade" to deal with
>> this kind of problems.
> Don't worry, apt-get worked nicely for the sarge->etch upgrade on a
> number of machines round here, while aptitude cause a lot of work that
> eventually came to nothing: IIRC it wanted to deinstall lprng for
> installing gthumb; apt-get installed gthumb without such nonsense, so
> I went back to apt-get.

I've had similar experiences with aptitude and synaptic and co.

I mean, I've had apt-get wanting to uninstall great swaths of my
system on numerous occasions. Right now it wants to uninstall pidgin
due to a conflict with the version of the pidgin and pidgin-data
packages, so I just sit back and relax for a week or two until they
sort it out. I've even accidentally let apt start ripping great chunks
out when I hit the wrong key before bolting to the toilet. That was fun
to recover from, even more fun than when it uninstalled
linux-utils, so I no longer had the getopt command. But then I run
Debian/Sid, so you get that.

But my attempts to use anything other than dselect/apt-get have run
into problems that they cruised through, and generally speaking, if
apt-get couldn't sort it out, neither could anything else.

The only thing missing from dselect/apt-get, is the ability to
track the difference between packages I've selected to install, and
packages that were installed as dependencies (and hence I'd like to see
removed when they're no longer needed).


Fredderic

Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:
> This is my /etc/apt/sources.list
> /-------------
> deb ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ stable contrib main non-free
> deb-src ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ stable contrib main non-free
> deb ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ testing contrib main non-free
> deb-src ftp://debian.tu-bs.de/debian/ testing contrib main non-free
> \-------------
>
> Any hint?

Try commenting out the "testing" lines above, running apt-get update and
trying again? With the above and no apt/preference etc you will be
trying to run a mix of stable (etch) and testing (lenny) at the moment.

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:13:34 +0000, Kai-Martin Knaak wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 04:15:52 -0700, Rodney wrote:
>
>> Did you read the release notes for Etch previous to starting the
>> upgrade? And, did you follow the procedure in those release notes?
>
> <blush>Ok, you got me red handed </blush> I overestimated the ability of
> "apt-get dist-upgrade" to deal with this kind of problems.
>
> What can I do to dig me out of this hole? Use apt-get with some --force
> options? Build a local kernel image from source? Use the GUI interface of
> aptitude to manually select what packages to install?
>
> ---<(kaimartin)>---

I'm sorry I can't give you a definitive answer about this. You asked for a
hint and I thought by reading through the release notes you might be able
to determine what might work for the situation that your system got into.

You could try to do the dreaded "downgrade" to get back to a sarge install
(or something close) and start again but as poster Paul Cupis mentioned
about the testing lines, it looks like you weren't running a pure sarge
system anyway. Make sure you don't have anything pinned that could be
getting in the way of the package manager's ability to work. Slogging
through this manually may be what you end up doing, with a harsh but
useful lesson for the next release.

How customised is your system, you could save your /home and do a fresh
install of etch (possibly on a different partition) and then spend the
time to reconfigure anything that needs it. But manually dealing with that
libc6 issue might be enough. Paul Cupis's advice is probably what I
would try first. I truly wish you good luck.

Note: If you have been using apt-get all along, there usually are issues
with switching to aptitude. What you have to do is "keep all" first but
I don't think that would be advised at this point. It seems the
Debian developers have decided that Aptitude is the future, so I think we
might as well become familiar with it.

An addition to the post.

Another thing for you to consider trying (if you're still at the same
point).
apt-get install -t etch linux-image-2.6.18-5-486 intramfs-tools
There was some mention of the initrd creator in your error report, perhaps
if you try to install the new kernel from etch and it at the same time...