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Pop!_OS (Linux) @lemmy.world gabriele97 @lemmy.g97.top

Apt, packages kept back: why and how to resolve it?

Hi, I've this situation when I apt upgrade. There are many pipewire-related packages kept back. Why? How can I solve it?

Thank you!

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  • Most likely phased updates. If you can wait a few days to get the updates you have to do nothing. Otherwise disable phased updates.

    The other reason apt holds back packages is because they can't be installed because of depency problems.

    • Yep I can wait but I think it's a while stuck in this way (more or less 2 weeks)

      • If it is phased updates two weeks is not uncommon. In the meantime you can try to fix the packet manager and use full-upgrade which focuses on dependencies.

        sudo apt clean
sudo apt update
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt install -f
sudo apt full-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove --purge

        • I used dist-upgrade and it worked.

          It's like 6.0 headers were the problem but I removed them with apt autoremove and it still shown the problem. apt dist-upgrade solved it by installing new dependencies. I don't know why the normal apt update didn't install them automatically.

          • OK, glad you got a result. It is odd, but some dependency issues have been observed lately. I don't know why full-upgrade didn't handle that after running that sequence. Here's a little context;

            dist-upgrade
   dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade,
   also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions
   of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and
   it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the
   expense of less important ones if necessary. So, dist-upgrade
   command may remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file
   contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package
   files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for overriding
   the general settings for individual packages.

            full-upgrade
   full-upgrade performs the function of upgrade but may also remove
   installed packages if that is required in order to resolve a
   package conflict.