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I'm (still) on Debian Squeeze. When I try to upgrade the system, here's what I get:

[09:20]/root# aptitude upgrade No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.

Looking at the log, I get a hint at the name of the culprit package:

Aptitude 0.6.3: log report Sat, Jun 22 2013 09:20:13 +0200 IMPORTANT: this log only lists intended actions; actions which fail due to dpkg problems may not be completed. Will install 0 packages, and remove 0 packages. =============================================================================== [HOLD] libxcb1 =============================================================================== Log complete.

However, if I look at the package, I don't get any more details:

[09:21]/root# aptitude show libxcb1 Package: libxcb1 State: installed Automatically installed: no Version: 1.6-1 Priority: optional Section: libs Maintainer: XCB Developers <[email protected]> Uncompressed Size: 188 k Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2), libxau6, libxdmcp6 Breaks: libxcb-xlib0 ...

I'm surprised by how little info aptitude is giving me about its refusal to upgrade the package.

My question is: What are the steps I should follow in this situation to find out why this package is not upgraded?

Update: Here's the desired command:

$ apt-cache policy libxcb1 libxcb1: Installed: 1.6-1 Candidate: 1.6-1+squeeze1 Version table: 1.6-1+squeeze1 0 500 http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates/main amd64 Packages *** 1.6-1 0 500 http://debian.mirrors.ovh.net/debian/ squeeze/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
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  • Can it be that your sources.list still points to the squeeze repos? Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 8:32
  • Yes it does. I haven't moved to Wheezy yet. Is it relevant? Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 8:58
  • 2
    Run apt-cache policy libxcb1 and paste the output. I think aptitude respects apt pinning. You could also try running apt-get install libxcbi and see what happens. Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 10:55
  • @rahmu of course it is! When you run apt-get upgrade, apt-get compares the state of the packages on your system against the state of the packages in your chosen repo. See my answer below. Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 15:04
  • Use apt-get dist-upgrade is an immediate, yet radical solution to your problem. I actually post to quote: "In case of doubt, please use the apt-get and apt-cache commands over the aptitude command." [debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/… Commented Jun 22, 2013 at 17:59

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You need to know why aptitude doesn't want to install that version of the package, with a quick why-not you can figure this out:

aptitude why-not libxcb1=1.6-1+squeeze1

But my guess is that one of the 79 reverse dependencies depended of the 1.6-1 version of the package, since there isn't any packages that breaks/conflicts with this library.

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