apt-get

[calador]

Does anyone know why typing:
sudo apt-get -f install

wants to delete so many archives of mine? After unpacking 958MB disk space will be freed.
it wants to delete over 100 things i use like firefox and python. I dont get it.

Should I let apt-get delete everything so that I can get it again... only this time the packages will be recognized?

Also, I've been using dpkg for a lot of packages up until now, saving them to my desktop and running dpkg -i on them, in case this may have an influence on this.

any help would be appreciated.

[devils casper]

You shouldn't install packages manually using dpkg command especially with force option.
ap-get stores downloaded packages in /var/cache/apt/archives folder and you can copy those to safe location for future use.

Could you post last 4-5 lines of apt-get -f install output?

[calador]

I repartitioned my computer w/ ubuntu 7.10 desktop i386 and am starting from scratch.
The crux of this comes from following the directions from:
InstallXenomai ? Barrett Customer Support ? Trac
to update our real time environment..
Do you have an idea why:
sudo apt-get install patch libncurses5-dev libc6-dev
would come up saying
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package libncurses5-dev


Also, why should i not manually install using dkpg?
thanks,

[D-cat]

It's okay to use dpkg as long as you know and trust the source of the .deb file; it's using dpkg with the --force(whatever) options that should be avoided. Forcing packages can break dependencies. Small ones might still work and be ignored at first, but as you add software and perform upgrades, this can have a snowball effect, eventually causing the package manager to want to sort of reset things, maybe breaking your whole system.

It's still preferable to use apt-get for security reasons.

[calador]

i found out what's up.
for some reason,
/etc/apt/sources.lists
had all of the sites commented out when I installed ubuntu 7.10. After removing all of the comments, apt-get works again.