[vox-tech] apt-get problem

[Eric Lin]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 01:14:51PM -0800, Norm Matloff wrote:
> The machine came with Ubuntu 8.04 installed, and I haven't upgraded.  I
> recently installed the new version of R, 2.10.0 using apt-get, and the
> installation went fine except for a message which went something like,
> "Inconsistency found in your packages.  Would you like this to be
> fixed?"  Innocently I answered yes, and found that what it did was to
> restore the old R, 2.6.2 or something like that. :-(  So, I re-installed

I suspect this error message is referring to R's dependencies that need
to be updated along with R, though it doesn't make much sense because
apt should not have allowed installing it in the first place. 

Try running "apt-get check" to see if there are any broken dependencies.
If there are, you can run "apt-cache -i unmet" without quotes, of
course, to see what packages have missing dependencies and looking for
R's packages to see what they need. Running "apt-cache depends r-base"
might also work (you'll see "<" and ">" around missing dependencies),
but r-base has lots of other components.

> 2.10.0, this time ignoring the warning message.
> 
> Any ideas out there?

I'm not sure if others would approve of this, but you could add Lucid
Lynx's universe repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list and upgrade R
using the lucid repository. It should theoretically have everything R
needs and should remove the error.

In /etc/apt/sources.list, this line would add lucid's universe
repository:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid universe

Then, run "apt-get update," "apt-get install --fix-broken," and finally,
"apt-get install r-base"

I'd remove the Lucid repository after you're done, because it could mess
with your upgrades. Mixing and matching different Ubuntu versions can be
a little messy.

> 
> Norm
> 
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