So after searching about the forums for broken package dependencies, I figured I'd post in hopes that someone can help. In order to use PAN (news). I had installed a package called hildon-libs0 which then apparently depends on libossomime0 - For awhile that was fine as I got the end result of being able to use PAN. Now since I want to upgrade the ever impressive vagalume client, app manager or apt-get warns that I have a conflicting package in libossomim0 (<1.8.5). I've tried to remove the libossomime0 package via apt-get to no avail as apt tells me that it's not installed. I've installed the newer pan that doesn't have the weird package dependencies as suggested here http://www.geocities.com/SiliconVall...an_OS2008.html

and am stuck as I can't remove something that isn't installed. I'd really rather not flash to remove but will if forced to. Is there something else that I can do to remove the offending package so that I'm not stopped from upgrading? This problem affects some other apps that I have tried to install as they all complain about this libossomime problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated and as a side quest if no one can help me with that, why oh why does app manager have scroll everything to one side when I can't possible move the bar to view the whole name of the installable program? Thanks..

- Apparently installing pan from the above link, still produces the same end result as I've attempted to install maemo mapper after installing pan and even after removing pan, I can't get around this.

I don't really recommend this course of action, but you can copy /var/lib/dpkg/status to a mmc and use a linux compatible text editor to edit the file to change the database of what is installed, what conflicts etc.

Have you looked around in red pill mode?

This is a weird idea and probably won't work, but is it possible to reinstall libossomime and then try to remove it?

I like the qwerty12 idea of editing the database -- maybe you will end up having to reflash, but it could be instructive.

I should have mentioned that I did try re-install then removing.. At that point I have the same problem with hildon-s0 library. I am going to try to edit the file. I kinda have the tablet exactly how I want it, but not being able to add anything more, certainly sucks. If it doesn't work, then I will wind up reflashing. Which brings up a different question. Is there some local on tablet area where all the .debs are stored? Just to save me from having to redownload everything? I've never gone digging around too much in the file system as I've never had to. Most everything just works without me fiddling with the internals and I figured that the more I dug around, the more liable I was to break something. Thanks for all the good ideas. Wish me luck!

I think .debs on IT are removed after installation to save disk space (on a regular debian system usually they are cached).

If you want to save and restore the selections you can try these commands from dpkg manual:

I never tried it. If you try it remember to remove from the list the offending packages causing you troubles.

You also need to have the right repositories configured to get the packages restored.
You can save /etc/apt/sources.list as reference to keep track of the configured repositories. I don't know if replacing it after reflash will break someting on IT, you'd better to insert them by hand on the application manager.