[vox-tech] apt-get problem

[Alex Mandel]

Norm Matloff wrote:
> In my description of the apt-get problems that arose when I installed
> the latest version of R, 2.10.0, I had one aspect incorrect:  I did not
> use apt-get to download 2.10.0; that would have just gotten me version
> 2.6.2, which I already had and which did not have crucial features.
> Instead, I went to the R Web page and downloaded a .deb file for Hardy
> Heron (Ubuntu 8.04, my OS).  I then used gdebi to install it, getting a
> warning message about "inconsistencies," as I wrote yesterday, after
> which I could not use apt-get to download any other stuff, e.g. mplayer.
> R itself worked fine.  Sorry for the misunderstanding.
> 
> Following some of the suggestions here, this evening I used the Update
> Manager to update all packages.  That restored the old R, 2.6.2, which
> is the latest version of R among my repositories (which are the ones
> that came with the system, no additions by me).  So it didn't help.
> 
> I then downloaded R from the R Web page again, by this time version
> 2.10.1.  Interestingly, gdebi didn't give me an error message, but again
> apt-get refused to download anything else afterward, citing
> inconsistencies.  Synaptic Package Manager would not even come up;
> instead, a little window came up saying "You have 12 broken packages on
> your system!  Use the 'Broken' filter to locate them."  Naturally, I
> declined.
> 
> I then followed the suggestion to use aptitude.  This turned out to
> solve my problem, as it organized the information better (especially
> from my point of view, as I don't know all the ins and outs of apt-get
> etc.).  Some of the information there pointed to the r-recommended
> package being for 2.6.2.  So I removed that using aptitude.
> 
> Well, of course, then R didn't work at all.  It was missing a library.
> So, I ran gdebi again to re-reinstalled R, hoping that that would pick
> up the libraries etc., and it worked!  R works fine, and I was able to
> download mplayer.  Still odd that apt-get had blocked me from adding
> mplayer just because of r-recommended.
> 
> Thanks for the help, everyone.  The suggestion to use aptitude was quite
> valuable; in retrospect, of course, I should have thought of the
> r-recommended problem, but aptitude really helped me zero in on it.
> All the other comments at least clarified things for me, and thus were
> valuable too.
> 
> Norm
> 

Keep in mind one should either use aptitude or apt, and be careful not
to mix them. They track packages differently and have the potential to
clobber each other.

As for R installs, the magic for me is to add the R repos for Ubuntu, so
that apt-get just works. See http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu/
This helps to always keep me up to date, although only some packages are
in the repos and for others I still do install.packages in R itself.

Alex