#1008587 installation-reports: dist-upgrade to sid works but autoremove takes out most of the Mate DE

#1008587#5
Date:
2022-03-29 06:42:37 UTC
From:
To:
(Please provide enough information to help the Debian
maintainers evaluate the report efficiently - e.g., by filling
in the sections below.)

Boot method: netinstall-virtualmachine
Image version: debian-11.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso
Date: <Date and time of the install>

Machine: i7-6700-non-k
Partitions: <df -Tl will do; the raw partition table is preferred>


Base System Installation Checklist:
[O] = OK, [E] = Error (please elaborate below), [ ] = didn't try it

Initial boot:           [ ]
Detect network card:    [ ]
Configure network:      [ ]
Detect media:           [ ]
Load installer modules: [ ]
Clock/timezone setup:   [ ]
User/password setup:    [ ]
Detect hard drives:     [ ]
Partition hard drives:  [ ]
Install base system:    [ ]
Install tasks:          [ ]
Install boot loader:    [ ]
Overall install:        [ ]

Comments/Problems:

<Dear maam / sir,
I have just reviewed ~
https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting.en.html
.. and I don't know that it is appropriate.
Allow me to explain.
I have a copy of Debian in a virtualbox, on a machine running Mint as the host.
I have converted to sid, so my sources.list looks like ~
----------
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ sid main
-----------
~ I then go sudo apt dist-upgrade, and I get sid, and roughly 1 GB of left-over files, and apt encourages me to remove them by ~
sudo apt autoremove
~ all perfectly normal.
What happens next is I can't reboot, I get a TTY.
I can force a startx, but many of my Mate packages are gone.
So an effort to manually reinstall mate, results in a dependency error, the version of mate to be installed requires an earlier version of python and you can't install that...
I have made a clone of that install before I ran the autoremove and tried various fixes but so far I have been stumped.
As long as I don't run the autoremove I have a perfectly functional sid + Mate, but there's about a GB of stuff I should be able to autoremove, and I can't...

Sorry this doesn't comply with your format request, but in the circumstances, I think an effort to make it fit would simply confuse the problem.

Yours respectfully, Mike Thompson.
.>


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