Tag: Debian Security

Latest Debian Security Update Breaks Jessie (Resolved).

In addition to my Debian / Stretch computer, I still operate two Debian / Jessie computers. Those latter two computers were subscribed to the Debian Security repository, as well as to the standard Debian / Jessie repository. Unfortunately, the package manager on one of my Debian / Jessie computers had made me aware of a conflict which existed, due to an update which Debian Security is pushing, to a package and its related packages, all belonging to:

liqt4-dev

The version which Debian Security is trying to install is:

4:4.8.6+git64-g5dc8b2b+dfsg-3+deb8u2

But, the version which the rest of Debian / Jessie was using, was:

4:4.8.6+git64-g5dc8b2b+dfsg-3+deb8u1

The problem was the fact that, if I told my package manager to go ahead with its suggested updates, doing so would have forced me to reject a long, long list of packages essential to my system, including many KDE-4-related packages. Now, I can just ignore that this problem exists, and rely on my package manager again not installing packages, that would break my system, on a daily basis. But this would turn into a very unsafe practice in the long run. And so, the only safe course of action for me currently seemed to be, to unsubscribe from Debian / Security instead.

(Update 17h55 : )

I have resubscribed to the Debian Security repository in question, and re-attempted the update, to find that this time, it worked. I can think of 2 possible reasons why it might not have worked the first time:

  1. My unattended-upgrades script is configured to break up an update into smaller pieces, and because this update involves a large number (over 20) of Qt 4 packages, this in itself could have broken the ability to perform the update, or
  2. Debian Security may not have put all the involved updates ‘out there’ on its servers, to be downloadable in one shot, even though every Qt 4 package needs to be updated, in order for any of the updates to succeed. But, only hours later, all the required packages may have become available (on the servers).

I rather think that it was due to reason (2) and not reason (1) above.

Dirk