Re: Apt error (tried other mailing list & Google), please help!

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, GuidoZ wrote:
> 
> My current delima is in the subject of this email. After doing some
> software uninstalls through YaST (removed the games, added some
> productivity tools), typing "apt-get update" simply returns the error:
> "E: Unable to determine a suitable system type". I did a fair amount
> of Goolge hunting, though not very much seems to be available.
> 
> The result that looks the most promising
> (http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/freshrpms-list/2003-June/004745.html
> thread) didn"t help much. The "solution"
> (http://lists.freshrpms.net/pipermail/freshrpms-list/2003-June/004761.html)
> doesn"t make sense to me, likely because I"m not exactly sure what it
> means. I know what a symlink is and how to make one (I believe), yet I
> don"t have the same situation this user did. (I didn"t change a thing
> security wise to break the original functionality.) I tried the

The "security" aspect of moving rpm in the above link is just so much
bollocks... Anyway, as for your actual problem - the " Unable to determine
a suitable system type" Unable to determine a suitable system type"
basically means that it cannot find either /bin/rpm and/or
/var/lib/rpm/Packages files. Which kinda means there's no rpm installed on
your system or the installation is damaged.

What does 'ls -l /bin/rpm /var/lib/rpm/Packages' say?

	- Panu -