Comments on: Ubuntu Dapper is NOT debian-unstable

By: Raoul

Raoul — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:05:38 +0000

Maybe a better (or simply different) way to overcome the problem :

sudo aptitude keep libc6 libc6-dev

Cheers !

By: Samir Patil

Samir Patil — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:42:08 +0000

I had a similar problem trying to install latest version of QPxTool from Debian unstable. It had dependencies on libqt3-mt then libfontconfig1 then fontconfig-config
It got stuck when installing fontconfig-config. This blog helped me.
sudo apt-get install -f fontconfig-config/edgy

By: Stg

Stg — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 19:39:40 +0000

Thank’s for this post!! It was very very helpfull!!

By: Thomas David Baker

Thomas David Baker — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:43:46 +0000

It’s not a bad philosophy, but GHC6.6 takes about 8 hours to compile on my machine IF I have GHC6.4 installed already. God knows how long it takes when it has to bootstrap with a C compiler only. A long time!

By: viza

viza — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:38:48 +0000

I generally just install from source if package dependancies aren’t being met, and the software is bleeding edge. It’s almost always easier that way. Of course if the system isn’t yours you may not have access to the compiler.

You can control where it’s installed and simply remove it and install the package when the packagers catch up. With a well written configure script (or reasonably easy to understand make file), the source and your compiler can be more flexible with dealing with your installed libc stuff, unless there are dependancies on functions within libc with a signature which is different from the installed version and the one the code was written against. If there are, you can often fix the issue in the source code and not need to upgrade glibc (or whatever).

I sort of got into this when OpenSSL had a serious vulnerability and it took forever for the new package to be built by the distro maintainers. I had a mandate to get it patched in 48 hours or the servers get the plug pulled. I got it done and ever since, I compile all web server and related software from source. (php, openssl, apache, and many other packages).

If there is a serious vulnerability I can patch it the moment the developers release the patch. I don’t need to wait weeks (or even months) for the packagers to get to it while exposed systems are vulnerable. After scripting the build process, it’s a snap to deal with when you need to recompile something.

I follow this philosophy for any service which is exposed to that combat zone we call the internet.

By: gesteur

gesteur — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:11:09 +0000

Hi thank you very much, i also got stuck into this problem, got madwifi package under debian-unstable.
However the apt-get did not work, i had to do, aptitude install libc6/dapper, this solved my problem.

thanks again

By: Thomas David Baker

Thomas David Baker — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:08:33 +0000

Hi Brian, I have ghc6.6 working on Dapper just fine. I just installed the “generic linux” download from the ghc site instead of the debian stuff.

By: brian

brian — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 15:01:13 +0000

has anyone been able to install ghc 6.6 on edgy? I guess wait for next ubuntu release in a couple of months?

By: will

will — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 04:46:41 +0000

Thank you for this post. That’ll show me for blindly adding depositories and expecting everything to work like magic….

By: javierguillot

javierguillot — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 02:13:57 +0000

Thank you very much for this post!!! I was fighting with a very similar problem with libc6 since about 3 days, and had gotten no help from the ubuntu forums. I had committed the mistake of installing a libc6 package from the debian page (packages.debian.org), which was not within the ubuntu repositories. But I did this AFTER installing a libgpod package from the same place, so I had to run

sudo apt-get install -f libc6/dapper libgpod0/dapper

to get the problem fixed.

Once again thank you.