Apt dependency hell

Roger H. Goun roger at bcah.com
Wed Nov 29 13:12:40 EST 2006


Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> This doesn't look like APT dependency hell, whatever that would be.  It looks 
> like Dapper no longer has a package for MySQL 4.1.

This system was originally installed early in Dapper development, when 
MySQL 4.1 was what you got. Later in Dapper development, MySQL 5 became 
the default. We weren't sure if all of our legacy apps could run on 
MySQL 5, so we held back the updates, resulting in a system that ran but 
had a mix of up-to-date and deprecated packages. Now a 
seemingly-unrelated change broke some Web sites by removing the obsolete 
package containing php4's mysql.so.

> At the very least, you should consider upgrading to MySQL 5 if you can make it 
> work.

That's what I'm trying to do, but apt doesn't recognize that 
mysql-common is no longer
satisfied by mysql-common-4.1, thus my comment about dependency hell. 
(Admittedly, it's a
different kind of dependency hell then you normally get on RPM-based 
systems.)

> A copy of your /etc/apt/sources.list file may help in determining where your 
> packages are coming from and why you would have unresolved dependencies.  If 
> you've strayed from the distribution sources anywhere, it'd be helpful to 
> know why also.

I think it's fine, but for the record:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-updates main restricted

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper universe

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main 
restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ dapper-backports main 
restricted universe multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-security universe

After removing the MySQL 4.1 packages, here's where we are:

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client-5.0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
   mysql-client-5.0: Depends: libdbd-mysql-perl (>= 1.2202) but it is 
not going to be installed
                     Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.0.22-0ubuntu6.06.2) but 
it is not installable
                     Depends: libmysqlclient15off (>= 
5.0.22-0ubuntu6.06.2) but it is not going to be installed
                     Depends: libmysqlclient15off (>= 5.0.19-1) but it 
is not going to be installed
   mysql-server-5.0: Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.0.22-0ubuntu6.06.2) but 
it is not installable
                     Depends: libmysqlclient15off (>= 5.0.19-1) but it 
is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

$ sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client-5.0 \
libdbd-mysql-perl mysql-common libmysqlclient15off
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Package mysql-common is not available, but is referred to by another 
package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package mysql-common has no installation candidate

Ideas?

-- Roger



More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list