Trouble with package management after using apt-mark

Sat Sep 5 15:00:35 UTC 2015

Hi,

I encountered the following issues.

Sorry for the broken English and that much text, the command line output
likely makes it easier to understand my wording.

When I tried to upgrade without --no-install-recommends, then a package
wanted to install grub. Seemingly because linux-lowlatency is upgraded,
but I didn't check hard and optional (aka recommended and suggested)
dependencies of the packages.

I considered to install empty dummy packages for software I don't want
to install, that's what I've done in the past when I used Debian/Ubuntu,
at least for gvfs and pulseaudio, but I did that, because those unneeded
packages are hard dependencies for no sane reason for a few other
packages I used. Now no package is a hard dependency and until now no
dummy package is installed.

I won't install with --no-install-recommends, since I want that some
packages are installed with recommended packages.

What I don't want at the moment is that an upgrade including
kernel packages installs grub.

After I apt-mark hold the grub packages, apt-get upgrade kept back the
kernel packages, so I unhold the packages, but linux-lowlatency
packages are still kept back. Before I hold and unhold the packages
they were not kept back.

Another issue is, that synaptic doesn't care about packages hold by
apt-mark, it still will upgrade linux, when the grub packages are hold,
but also install the hold grub packages. [1]

Synaptic marked the not upgraded linux-lowlatency packages with a "!".

A synaptic "Fix Broken Packages" claims to be successful, but the
linux-lowlatency-packages are still marked with a "!".

If there's no other way, it's no problem for me to build empty dummy
packages that will fake to provide the grub stuff.

However, how can I fix the issue, that the linux packages are now kept
back. Again, they were not kept back, before I hold and unhold them.

An install would work, but I want to know if this really will fix all
issues that the apt-mark hold/unhold does cause. [2]

FWIW [3]

Btw. "was already not hold" indicates that holding packages that aren't
installed doesn't work, but seemingly this is the culprit, that now
packages are kept back by apt-get and that they are marked by synaptic.

Regards,
Ralf

PS: I didn't use Debian or Ubuntu for a long time, nowadays I'm used to
Arch's pacman. The DEB and pacman package management follow completely
different approaches, so I likely fail to notice a simple solution for this
issue.

[1]
[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-mark hold grub-common grub-gfxpayload-lists grub-pc grub-pc-bin grub2-common os-prober gvfs pulseaudio
grub-common set on hold.
grub-gfxpayload-lists set on hold.
grub-pc set on hold.
grub-pc-bin set on hold.
grub2-common set on hold.
os-prober set on hold.
gvfs set on hold.
pulseaudio set on hold.

[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-headers-lowlatency linux-image-lowlatency linux-lowlatency
[snip]

[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-mark unhold grub-common grub-gfxpayload-lists grub-pc grub-pc-bin grub2-common os-prober gvfs pulseaudio
grub-common was already not hold.
grub-gfxpayload-lists was already not hold.
grub-pc was already not hold.
grub-pc-bin was already not hold.
grub2-common was already not hold.
os-prober was already not hold.
gvfs was already not hold.
pulseaudio was already not hold.

[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-headers-lowlatency linux-image-lowlatency linux-lowlatency
The following packages will be upgraded:
  build-essential cpp-5 g++-5 gcc-5 gcc-5-base libapparmor1 libasan2 libatomic1 libcc1-0 libcilkrts5 libgcc-5-dev libgcc1
  libgfortran3 libgomp1 libgstreamer1.0-0 libitm1 liblsan0 libmpx0 libquadmath0 libstdc++-5-dev libstdc++6 libtsan0
  libubsan0 linux-libc-dev python-characteristic
25 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 88.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 173 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
[snip]

[2]
[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-get install linux-lowlatency
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.1.0-3 linux-headers-4.1.0-3-lowlatency linux-image-4.1.0-3-lowlatency
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  grub-common grub-gfxpayload-lists grub-pc grub-pc-bin grub2-common linux-headers-4.2.0-7 linux-headers-4.2.0-7-lowlatency
  linux-headers-lowlatency linux-image-4.2.0-7-lowlatency linux-image-lowlatency os-prober
[snip]

[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-get install --no-install-recommends linux-lowlatency
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.1.0-3 linux-headers-4.1.0-3-lowlatency linux-image-4.1.0-3-lowlatency
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-4.2.0-7 linux-headers-4.2.0-7-lowlatency linux-headers-lowlatency linux-image-4.2.0-7-lowlatency
  linux-image-lowlatency
Suggested packages:
[snip]

[3]
[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-get install --fix-broken
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 28 not upgraded.

[root at moonstudio weremouse]# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
[snip]
The following packages have been kept back:
  linux-headers-lowlatency linux-image-lowlatency linux-lowlatency
The following packages will be upgraded:
  build-essential cpp-5 g++-5 gcc-5 gcc-5-base libapparmor1 libasan2 libatomic1 libcc1-0 libcilkrts5 libgcc-5-dev libgcc1
  libgfortran3 libgomp1 libgstreamer1.0-0 libitm1 liblsan0 libmpx0 libquadmath0 libstdc++-5-dev libstdc++6 libtsan0
  libubsan0 linux-libc-dev python-characteristic
25 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
Need to get 88.5 MB of archives.
After this operation, 173 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n