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I'm having some issues with aptitude. I'm attempting to install all the fonts available in the debian repos, but apt-get doesn't seem to like the command apt-get install ttf* (its conflict resolver can't cope), and I've never been able to get regex expressions and wildcards to work in aptitude. I tried the alternative

aptitude search ttf | awk '{print $2}' | xargs aptitude install

After running the resolver, it proposes a solution with the standard Accept this solution? [y/n/q/?], but automatically aborts before I have the chance to select an option. I've tried it on 4 different computers, all running the latest version of debian testing, and they all behave exactly the same.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on? I can install them one at a time, but I'm sure there are richer things in life...

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  • Maybe try installing ttf-* (ttf* will include some utilities)
    – Dan
    Feb 26, 2015 at 14:07
  • That doesn't appear to make a difference - apt-get complains it cannot resolve my dependencies, and aptitude still proposes a solution, but immediately aborts before I can respond to it...
    – srthompers
    Feb 26, 2015 at 14:13
  • Funny, on my ubuntu there are no complains, just 226 packages to install. Maybe time to look at the complains and figure out what's so wrong it cannot be resolved.
    – Dan
    Feb 26, 2015 at 14:15
  • You are getting the immediate exit because aptitude is reading the y/n/q response from its input pipe, which has been emptied by xargs. Try ... aptitude -y install to pre-answer the prompt. Or use ... echo xargs aptitude install, then copy/paste the output (adding quotes if necessary).
    – AFH
    Feb 26, 2015 at 14:30
  • @AFH that's exactly what was happening, thanks! If you post it as an answer, then I can accept it.
    – srthompers
    Feb 26, 2015 at 15:05

1 Answer 1

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You are getting the immediate exit because aptitude is reading the y/n/q response from its input pipe, which has been emptied by xargs.

There are two things to try - you can pre-answer the prompt with:

aptitude search ttf | awk '{print $2}' | aptitude -y install

Or you can display the command which would be executed, then copy/paste the output (adding quotes if necessary, though I doubt they will be) with:

aptitude search ttf | awk '{print $2}' | xargs echo aptitude install

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