6.7 full-upgrade tends to break packages because they are marked as required

Hi, I upgraded to 6.7

Upon next full-upgrade I obtained this:

Starting pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 4 
Starting 2 pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 4 
Investigating (0) pipewire-alsa:amd64 < none -> 1.2.6-2+24.04+noble+release+build3 @un uN Ib > 
Broken pipewire-alsa:amd64 Conflicts on pulseaudio:amd64 < 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 @ii mK > 
  Considering pulseaudio:amd64 0 as a solution to pipewire-alsa:amd64 103 
  Added pulseaudio:amd64 to the remove list 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10 for pulseaudio but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 for pulseaudio but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10 for pulseaudio but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
Broken pipewire-alsa:amd64 Conflicts on pulseaudio:i386 < none | 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 @un umH > 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 for pulseaudio but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10 for pulseaudio but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Considering pulseaudio:amd64 0 as a solution to pipewire-alsa:amd64 103 
  Added pulseaudio:amd64 to the remove list 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10 for pulseaudio but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Fixing pipewire-alsa:amd64 via remove of pulseaudio:amd64 
  Fixing pipewire-alsa:amd64 via remove of pulseaudio:amd64 
Investigating (0) initramfs-tools:amd64 < none -> 0.142ubuntu25.8 @rc umN Ib > 
Broken initramfs-tools:amd64 Conflicts on linux-initramfs-tool:amd64 < none @un mH > 
  Considering dracut:amd64 3 as a solution to initramfs-tools:amd64 9 
  Added dracut:amd64 to the remove list 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 0.1-5.1 for tiny-initramfs but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Conflicts//Breaks against version 060+5-1ubuntu3 for dracut but that is not InstVer, ignoring 
  Fixing initramfs-tools:amd64 via remove of dracut:amd64 
Done 
Entering ResolveByKeep 
Calculating upgrade... Done 
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: 
  dracut-core kpartx libddcutil4 libfwupd2 libpyside6-py3-6.10 libshiboken6-py3-6.10 pigz 
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them. 
The following packages will be REMOVED: 
  dracut pulseaudio 
The following NEW packages will be installed: 
  attr brltty brltty-speechd cxx-rust-cssparser firefox fonts-symbola initramfs-tools kf6-kwayland libcamera0.2 libcephfs2 liblttng-ust-common1t64 
  liblttng-ust-ctl5t64 liblttng-ust1t64 libpipewire-0.3-modules-xrdp librados2 librdmacm1t64 libspa-0.2-libcamera liburing2 neon-common neon-desktop 
  pipewire-alsa pipewire-audio pipewire-module-xrdp pipewire-v4l2 plasma-desktop-data plasma-nano plasmalogin python3-dnspython qmlkonsole samba 
  samba-ad-provision samba-vfs-modules tdb-tools union 
The following packages will be upgraded: 
  neon-essentials-desktop neon-settings-2 neon-ubuntu-advantage-tools ubuntu-advantage-tools ubuntu-pro-client ubuntu-pro-client-l10n 
6 upgraded, 34 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 
Need to get 101 MB of archives. 
After this operation, 394 MB of additional disk space will be used.

I use dracut because I need TPM support for LUKS.

Pulseaudio is necessary for Rocksmith2014 cable.

Do I have to mark these packages individually to avoid having my system broken on next boot?

Thank for your advices.

There is a pulseaudio API provided by pipewire, does that not work for you?

please name your distro and try to address the issue there

packaging is almost always a distro issue

I guess it is KDE Neon, is this an exception as it is made by KDE?

I see the same here. pipewire wants to get installed removing pulseaudio. I definitely to not want pipewire since I want to keep my pulseaudio/JACK setup. This is in KDE Neon.

Yes, sorry, KDE neon user.

@barryascott I have no idea of how to use pulse audio yet. It always looked like another complication layer since I have no complex audion management to handle.

Pipewire was written with the goal of replacing pulseaudio (no longer being developted) and jack.

I know it has a pulseaudio API so old apps still work.
Also thought it was able to replace JACK.
Pipewire was designed to be-able to do pro audio.

It world be worth your time investigating if it will work for your apps.

OK, but how do I prevent the upgrade to remove dracut, that is supposed to be the replacement of initramfs… See the joke coming? :slight_smile:

I can recommend to switch to Fedora KDE / Fedora Kinoite / KDE Linux instead

KDE Neon is always a crazy mess on upgrades, happened with the Plasma 6 upgrade too. No issues at all on Fedora Kinoite back then

Not a proper solution, sorry. fedora is also missing packages that are deb only.

Plus, I have no plan to reinstall my system now.

Is it possible to let the updater do its removal of dracut and then reinstall it?

Will it remove the configuration files or just leave them as-is?

That’s how I got out of this madness:

sudo dpkg --force-remove-essential -r neon-desktop neon-common
sudo apt remove brltty
sudo apt install dracut
sudo dracut --regenerate-all --force
sudo dpkg-reconfigure plasmalogin  --> select sddm 
reboot

Now I am going to test plasma login and see of I can get back here.

Plasmalogin works too.

initramfs-tools is a hard dependency to brltty. It should allow dracut to be fulfilling the dependency as well:

apt depends brltty
brltty
  Depends: initramfs-tools (>= 0.40ubuntu30)

Followed up by bug report:

In the mean time, one shall use the following to avoid having apt making tentative in removing dracut:

sudo apt-mark hold dracut

Looking forward for resolving dependencies of the dracut.