I'm using Basil Gello's Kodi repository to have the latest Kodi installed in Debian10 and have a few dependencies for kodi installed from this repo.
Recently pulseaudio got uninstalled and I don't know why...probably because I upgraded a package which somehow resulted in it being redundant and it getting removed with sudo apt-get autoremove. I didn't explicitly install any new package and only ran upgrades (sudo apt upgrade). It could be related to an installation of kmix which I didn't select to install or an upgrade of postgres, maybe related to packages like akonadi-backend-sqlite...I haven't found out the cause so far and don't know how to find out. Another Debian10/KDE running almost the same configs and packages doesn't have this problem.
Now the audio is missing which is why I'm trying to reinstall pulseaudio (I wouldn't do so if there are good reasons to use an alternative to it).
I first tried running sudo apt install pulseaudio for which I get:
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
pulseaudio : Depends: libasound2-plugins but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
If I add the missing depency I get: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libasound2-plugins : Depends: libavresample4 (>= 7:4.0) but it is not going to be installed and when I add that dependency (sudo apt-get install pulseaudio libasound2-plugins libavresample4) The following packages have unmet dependencies: libavresample4 : Depends: libavutil56 (= 7:4.3.1-6~bpo10+1) but 7:4.3.2-2~bpo10+1 is to be installed. This is because these packages are from Basil Gello's repo with newer versions than what pulseaudio requires.
I tried installing the needed versions and used e.g. sudo apt list -a libavutil56 to display available versions even though it looks like I can also install older versions not displayed with this command. If I try to install all needed dependencies with the needed versions I end up with:
sudo apt-get install pulseaudio libasound2-plugins libavresample4=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1 libavutil56=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1 libavcodec58=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1 libswresample3=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1
However, running this command would remove important packages like the dolphin file-explorer.
When I try it with sudo apt-get install pulseaudio/buster-backports I get: The following packages have unmet dependencies: pulseaudio : Depends: libpulse0 (= 13.0-3~bpo10+1) but 12.2-4+deb10u1 is to be installed Depends: libasound2-plugins but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages
When I try adding the requested dependencies with the specified versions like so: sudo apt-get install pulseaudio/buster-backports libpulse0/buster-backports libasound2-plugins libavresample4 libavutil56=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1 libavcodec58=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1 pulseaudio-utils/buster-backports libswresample3=7:4.1.6-1~deb10u1 libpulsedsp libpulse0=12.2-4+deb10u1 I get: The following packages have unmet dependencies: libpulsedsp : Depends: libpulse0 (= 12.2-4+deb10u1) but 13.0-3~bpo10+1 is to be installed
How can I reinstall pulseaudio without that Kodi repository adding the latest version of it? Is a change to the repo needed?
If there is a way to find out why it was uninstalled in the first place that would be useful too.
This is similar to the problem I had here.
aptitude why-not pulseaudiocan give you a hint.i kde-plasma-desktop Depends plasma-desktop (>= 4:5.10) i A plasma-desktop Recommends plasma-pa (>= 4:5.14) p plasma-pa Depends pulseaudio p pulseaudio:i386 Provides pulseaudio p pulseaudio:i386 Conflicts pulseaudio. I'm already using the latest version of KDE in Debian's official repos and enabling a newer version for Debian10 would be a separate problem.sudo apt-get install -t buster-backports libpulse0libasound2-plugins libavresample4 pulseaudio rtkitand downgradelibavcodec58 libavutil56 libswresample3but also to remove lots of needed packages like the dolphin file explorer and ffmpeg.