apt-get: “the following packages have been kept back”
Problem
You install something with apt-get and it keeps telling you that some “packages have been kept back”. Great! What to do with that?
Solution
After looking at this warning for years, today I got fed up and looked after it on Google. I found the solution here. If you have a package called X kept back, then try to install it with “sudo apt-get install X“. That’s all.
doesn’t “sudo apt-get dist-upgrade” do the trick?
Unfortunately not.
Worked like a charm! Thanks, this has been bugging me for a few weeks.
dist upgrade always works for me.
aptitude full-upgradePerfect this, kept back behavior, has been annoying more some time. Worked for me.
I think doing the “sudo apt-get install X” is a slightly different behaviour than you may want.
If you have package X which relies on package Y, the system will install Y when you tell it to install X. When you uninstall X, the system can then uninstall Y as it’s no longer needed.
If at some stage you had Y as a kept back package and specifically told apt-get to install the update, I believe the system marks the package as something you want installed and will no longer remove it if X is uninstalled.
Doing “aptitude full-upgrade” on the other hand appears to upgrade the kept back packages without affecting dependencies.
That’s what I was looking for ‘dist-upgrade’ did the trick.
Just successfully turned a mint install into an ubuntu 12.10 install.
Package managers take a bow.
sometimes this package has unmet dependencies and it’s impossible to meet them; for example you have python 2.7 installed and the package needs python < 2.7; so apt-get install won't solve the problem