Unable to update/upgrade 6.7.1 after HD install

[klaus2008]

... This is failing when trying something with 'perl': E: Could not perform immediate configuration on 'perl'. Please see man 5 apt.conf under APT::Immediate-Configure for details.

If you issue the command

man 5 apt.conf

in a terminal you can read the fine manual page. You should find the following section.

Immediate-Configure

Defaults to on which will cause APT to install essential and
important packages as fast as possible in the install/upgrade
operation. This is done to limit the effect of a failing dpkg(1)
call: If this option is disabled APT does treat an important
package in the same way as an extra package: Between the unpacking
of the important package A and his configuration can then be many
other unpack or configuration calls, e.g. for package B which has
no relation to A, but causes the dpkg call to fail (e.g. because
maintainer script of package B generates an error) which results
in a system state in which package A is unpacked but unconfigured
- each package depending on A is now no longer guaranteed to work
as their dependency on A is not longer satisfied. The immediate
configuration marker is also applied to all dependencies which can
generate a problem if the dependencies e.g. form a circle as a
dependency with the immediate flag is comparable with a
Pre-Dependency. So in theory it is possible that APT encounters a
situation in which it is unable to perform immediate
configuration, errors out and refers to this option so the user
can deactivate the immediate configuration temporarily to be able
to perform an install/upgrade again. Note the use of the word
"theory" here as this problem was only encountered by now in real
world a few times in non-stable distribution versions and was
caused by wrong dependencies of the package in question or by a
system in an already broken state, so you should not blindly
disable this option as the mentioned scenario above is not the
only problem immediate configuration can help to prevent in the
first place. Before a big operation like dist-upgrade is run with
this option disabled it should be tried to explicitly install the
package APT is unable to configure immediately, but please make
sure to report your problem also to your distribution and to the
APT team with the buglink below so they can work on improving or
correcting the upgrade process.

You could open a terminal and create a file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/11Immediate-Configure with the line

APT::Immediate-Configure "false";

using leafpad

sudo leafpad /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/11Immediate-Configure

or any other text editor of your choice. After saving the file and exiting the text editor you could try

sudo apt-get -f install

If this succeeds you can remove the configuration file

sudo rm /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/11Immediate-Configure

I hope this helps.

[Gondarc]

Utu:
Thank you. Someone suggested the xrandr option back at the time (several years ago) but the basic problem was simple ... Knoppix set up to display at 1280x1024, but my monitor would not accept anything above 1024x768 and stayed blank apart from an "Out of Range" message ... I had no other monitor available ... so I simply could not issue any command after the initial boot instruction (where the screen appeared to be at 800x600) because once the boot process started I could not see anything and thus had no idea as to what stage the boot had reached, apart from the nice lady intoning "Initating Start-Up Sequence" on the speakers. I tried alternate boots (including framebuffer) with various cheat code settings, but Knoppix resolutely went to 1280x1024 each time. After a couple of days of this, my comments were bordering on unprintable ... and then I found Kubuntu. Hey, ho. Returning to Knoppix has actually been very useful for forcing me to lose the convenience of GUI installs and get my fingers dirty in the system again ... since I first started on Unix-style systems with SCO Xenix (pobody's nerfect), which time could only be described as "interesting" ... I am finding the fun in Linux again. I may try the old monitor once more (if I can prise it off from my son's system), because I am restoring an old HP business server unit as a temporary workstation for a colleague on a limited budget ... this could get "interesting" again.

Klaus2008:
Thank you, too. Yes I found and read the manual page, but did not know how to disable the Immediate Configure. Relearning as I go. Will try with apt-get over the next few days and report back.

[Gondarc]

Adding the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/11Immediate-Configure had no effect on a "sudo apt-get -f install" command which reported nothing wrong. I left the file in situ and ran "sudo apt-get upgrade" which updated 172 packages, including some but not all of Libre Office, but kept back 86 packages (including the rest of Libre Office):

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  cpp cpp-4.6 ffmpeg gcc gcc-4.6 gcc-4.6-base gdisk gnome-mplayer grub
  icedtea6-plugin libao-common libavcodec53 libavdevice53 libavfilter2
  libavformat53 libavutil51 libcairo-perl libgail-common libgail18 libgcc1
  libgfortran3 libglib-perl libglib2.0-0 libgnome2-canvas-perl libgnome2-perl
  libgnome2-vfs-perl libgomp1 libgpod-common libgpod4 libgstfarsight0.10-0
  libgtk2-perl libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin liblocale-gettext-perl libmpc2
  libpango-perl libpostproc52 libpulse0 libpurple0 libquadmath0 libreadline5
  libreadline6 libreoffice-base libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-calc
  libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw libreoffice-filter-binfilter
  libreoffice-gnome libreoffice-gtk libreoffice-impress libreoffice-math
  libreoffice-writer libsnmp15 libstdc++6 libswscale2 libtext-charwidth-perl
  libtext-iconv-perl mplayer network-manager network-manager-gnome
  network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-pptp
  network-manager-pptp-gnome network-manager-vpnc network-manager-vpnc-gnome
  openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless perl perl-base perl-modules pidgin
  policykit-1-gnome python python-minimal python-uno samba-common smbclient
  ttf-opensymbol usb-modeswitch usb-modeswitch-data vim vim-common vim-runtime
  vim-tiny
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 86 not upgraded.

Synaptic still wants to remove packages wholesale in order to upgrade the rest, where apt-get just holds them back ... where do I find out why apt-get is holding these back?

Also, if I try to install the Libre Office British English package, Synaptic still wants to remove things wholesale, including compiz-configuration-manager, gimp, kompozer, adriane (various), bluetooth (various), cpp (various), gnome (various) et al; where apt-get just reports:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 python-pyatspi : Depends: python-pyorbit but it is not going to be installed
                  Depends: python-gnome2 but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

which is puzzling, because all three python packages are installed and apparently at the latest version.

Hmmm!