I made a big mistake: dependency hell!

[Johan Grönqvist]

2011-01-23 21:29, Dotan Cohen skrev:
> In trying to install Digikam 1.7 on Kubuntu 10.10 I got myself into
> dependency hell. I was installing some Natty packages with dpkg.

> When I try to "apt-get install -f" in a virtual
> terminal it wants to remove almost everything!
>
>  I tried removing the last packages
> installed as listed in /var/lib/dpkg/info, [...] but aptitiude and apt-get both want to remove 200
> packages even when I try to remove just those ten or so.

Why does it want to remove all those packages?

I usually use the interactive aptitude, because that gives me a preview 
of the planned changes, and (more importantly) gives me the ability to 
change things there. In that preview, you should be able to see that it 
wants to remove lots of packages, but also see why, and you could mark 
that you want to keep them instead of having them removed.

Do you know if a meta-package could have been removed? This could make 
your system think that the 200 packages are no longer needed, because 
they where installed only because the meta-package needed them. The main 
candidate here might be kubuntu-desktop, so make sure you have that 
installed, or install it again.

Hope it helps

/ johan