Two packages 'kept back' after latest apt update on 22.04

Karl Auer kauer at biplane.com.au
Sat Jul 30 00:52:07 UTC 2022


On Fri, 2022-07-29 at 17:03 +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote:
> this is the new (since 21.10 IIRC) "phasing" feature [1] of the
> ubuntu archive
> 

I've been seeing that message for a lot longer than that. This question
was posed twelve years ago:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/601/the-following-packages-have-been-kept-back-why-and-how-do-i-solve-it

I'm not 100% sure I know all the ins and outs, so take the following
with a large grain of salt! And if anyone with more knowledge that I
wants to try a better explanation, please do.

If I understand correctly, the message means that installing a new
package (or upgrading an existing one) will make changes that affect
more than just that package. For example:

packageA needs packageX.1
packageB also needs packageX.1

At this point, packageA, packageB and packageX.1 are all installed and
life is good.

Now you want to upgrade packageA, but the upgrade requires packageX.2.
Replacing packageX.1 might affect packageB, so apt-get doesn't do that
- and tells you that packageB and packageX.2 have been held back.

Often happens with new kernels. The solution is usually to explicitly
install the packages (apt install ...), possibly requesting a dry run
first (use the -s option) if you have any doubts.

It's interesting that in the OP's case explicitly installing those
packages didn't work - what does "didn't sort things out" mean? What
did the install command say about those packages?

Regards, K.

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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

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