[ale] Debian package insanity

[jimpop at yahoo.com (Jim Popovitch)]

Jason Day wrote:
  > So, as near as I can determine, I need to uninstall xterm, but I can't
> uninstall it because it's not installed.  And I can't reinstall it,
> because it uses a directory that's in xutils, which I also can remove
> because it doesn't seem to be installed either.

I would recommend you do this:

   dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq xterm
   dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq xbase-clients
   dpkg --purge --pending
   apt-get install xterm
   apt-get install xbase-clients

> spiderman:/home/jday# aptitude install -f

Get rid of aptitude.  (dpkg --purge aptitude).  Use dselect instead.

hth,

-Jim P.