Broken packages in Debian Sarge: caused by security updates

After getting my newly-Debianized laptop connected via wifi to the internet, I edited the file /etc/apt/sources.list

so that it read as follows

#deb file:///cdrom/ sarge main

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 r1 _Sarge_ - Official i386 Binary-3 (20051220)]/ unstable contrib main
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 r1 _Sarge_ - Official i386 Binary-2 (20051220)]/ unstable main
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 r1 _Sarge_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20051220)]/ unstable contrib main

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sarge main contrib non-free

The pound sign before the lines beginning “deb cd-rom” causes apt-get update to ignore them. The last line tells apt-get update to fetch a list of sofware packages from the named website. After making the changes to /etc/apt/sources.list, I ran

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade (to upgrade all the software packages to the latest versions in the Sarge distribution).

But upon running the last command, I got a message that 20 packages were being “held back” (no reason given). Going into the aptitude program (aptitude is a nicer user interface for apt-get), it turns out that these packages were broken due to missing dependencies (i.e., missing programs or libraries, or obsolete versions of either). But Sarge is an old distribution (current stable distro is Etch), so why would these dependency conflicts have occurred?

Long story short: commenting out the line about the security updates, then re-running apt-get update; apt-get upgrade completely solved the problem.

Debian Sarge install with old CD set and a thumb drive

The following is mainly to remind myself how I got my system reinstalled, and for the use of anyone else in a similar situation.

I managed to corrupt either the master boot record or the partition table of the hard drive on my crappy old Winbook (400 Mhz, 128 MB RAM). And I don’t have a permanent, wired internet connection, only a shared wireless connection. So how to get my laptop back?

Luckily, I had some Debian CDs from a couple of years ago, so I was able to reinstall a more-or-less functional Linux system. But ndiswrapper, the module that allows you to use Windows drivers for wireless cards, wasn’t included. Better yet, there isn’t a binary package for the ndiswrapper module. So you have to apt-get ndiswrapper-source and ndiswrapper-utils, then compile the ndiswrapper module. But how to get them without having the wireless access in the first place?

The steps involved turned out to be:

1. Install base system from CDs.
2. apt-get install module-assistant build-essential kernel-headers-`uname -r`
3. apt-get install bsdgames (so I could play mille bornes while waiting for the install to finish)
4. apt-get install x-window-system icewm (latter is a light, fast, intuitive window manager, also see fluxbox)
5. apt-get install dillo mozilla-firefox (two browsers, one minimal, one javascript-enabled)
6. apt-get install wireless-tools
7. download ndiswrapper-source and ndiswrapper utils from internetworked computer, transfer via thumb drive to Winbook
8. dpkg -i ndiswrapper-source*.deb
9. dpkg -i ndiswrapper-utils*.deb These last two packages are interdependent. But I couldn’t install them simultaneously using apt-get, because the packages in the APT database are from the CDs, which didn’t have the ndiswrapper packages.
10. apt-get -f install – forced the two ndiswrapper packages, already unpacked by dpkg, to configure. That could possibly have been problematic, but it seems I was lucky.
11. module-assistant — used the UI to choose the steps to build and install the ndiswrapper module.

After successfully building and installing the module, I installed the driver with

ndiswrapper -i <path to win driver>/mrv8335.inf

then

modprobe ndiswrapper

and the wireless card lit up (only necessary the first time. Module-assistant adds the necessary line to /etc/modules, so the module is automatically loaded at startup).

After that:

iwconfig wlan0 essid "ACCESS POINT"
dhclient wlan0

and I was connected to the internet.

Setting up a Lexmark Z611 printer on a Debian Linux system

1. Get the Linux driver package from the Lexmark site: click here to start the download
2. Follow the instructions here. As per those instructions, you will have to restart CUPS after the driver is installed; otherwise, the printer driver won’t appear in the config options when you go to set it up. To restart CUPS, type at the command prompt:

   /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

3. If you want to have commands like ‘lpr’ work through CUPS (printing from Mozilla seems to require it, or is at least simpler), install the Debian package cupsys-bsd by typing at the command prompt:

   apt-get install cupsys-bsd

That’s all it took for me, YMMV. If you are only using the black cartridge, not the color or both, see the README that came with the Linux driver package. You can change the relevant option with the CUPS browser interface.

All Linux henceforth

OK, I’ve deleted Windows from my hard drive and am flying strictly open-source now. I made the switch partly because I want to be MS-free, partly because I like the UNIX interface, and partly to support free software. But the main reason I switched is because the XP I was running was a cracked copy installed by the outlaw biker from whom I bought the PC (Celeron 1.3 Ghz, 512MB RAM, $25). So I’m totally legit now.