[TriLUG] Tip: Breakage of X caused by aptitude updates

[Brian Henning]

Maybe I'm the last one in line to encounter this problem and an apparent 
working solution, but I thought I'd post this for posterity (and give 
smarter, wiser folks the opportunity to say "YOU MORON!  What were you 
thinking?!")

So.  Latest wave of updates to x11, particularly xorg, come with a 
warning saying something along the lines of "Some users have reported 
this breaks X completely!"  Well, now I'm one of the affected.  I found 
that issuing the following dpkg command will get the chink out of the 
way that keeps all of the rest of X from updating / installing correctly:

% dpkg --install --force-configure-any --force-overwrite 
/var/cache/apt/archives/x11-common-_version-stuff-just-use-tab-complete_.deb

Seemingly, without the force-configure-any, x11-common dies, complaining 
that /usr/include/X11 is missing, and without --force-overwrite (in my 
case at least) complains about overwriting a 
/usr/X11/bin/somethingorother that's also part of Motif.

With x11-common taken care of, all the other myriad x11 / xorg packages 
click into place via pressing "g" in aptitude.

Hope this helps somebody, or helps me if it happens again!  ha.

Cheers,
~Brian



-- 
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Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
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