MEPIS Community Forum

My son who is my Linux expert reinstalled Mepis when my computer needed a new master HD. Unfortunately, when the applications were downloaded, the batch did not include WINE to run Windows applications. I carefully, searched for it in my installation and it wasn't there. He advised me to contact the community for help rather than relying totally on his time. So here it is: When I open Synaptic Package Manager and Reload to open the online application base in order to search for WINE and install it, I get the following error messages:

E: Unable to increase the size of the MMap as the limit of 20000000 bytes is already reached.
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room. Please increase the size of APT::Cache-Limit. Current value: 25165824. (man 5 apt.conf)
E: Error occurred while processing ploticus (NewVersion2)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.us.debian.org_debian_dists_sid_main_binary-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

OK any help will be rewarded by a one million dollar check in the mail...or at least a big thank you. How do I resolve these (6) error message? Remember, I am a NEWBIE and you gotta keep it simple. Thanks for your kind attention.

The first thing I would do is edit the apt.conf file and increase the cache size. Simultaneously press the Alt+F2 keys and type in:Find the line with "APT::Cache-Limit 20000000;" and change it to something like: "APT::Cache-Limit 75000000;"


Secondly I would disable the sid repo that you've added, because unless you know what you're doing you will just cause yourself problems having it enabled.


Some fairly recent builds of Wine are available in the CR's. Wine 1.4 is available in the main CR repo and Wine 1.5 is available in the testrepo. The entries for those repos (shown below) are already in the sources.list but they are disabled by default. {I'm assuming you are using Mepis 11.0}

deb http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/repo/ mepis11cr main non-free
deb http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testrepo/ mepis11cr test

Thank you for your prompt response. I used your script line in terminal and it brought up apt config for editting as you suggest.

What is meant by "disable the sid repo that you've added"?

One of the error messages in your first post shows that you have a sid repo enabled


Mepis is based on Debian stable (in the case of Mepis 11.0 Debian stable is codenamed Squeeze). Sid is unstable and is the repo which most newer version packages come from, but it can be kind of dangerous to mix sid/unstable repos with stable repos. I'm guessing the sid repo might have been added (by you, or your son) with the thought that you would be able to get a more recent version of Wine. Adding the sid repo is also what probably caused the cache to exceed it's limit.

You can disable the sid repo in Synaptic by going to Settings -> Repositories. Scroll thru the repo entries to find the one for the sid repo.

URI: ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/
Distribution: sid
Section(s): main contrib non-free

Your entry might not be exactly as shown above, the main thing you're looking for is an entry with "sid" in the Distribution field. Clear the checkbox for that repo entry, press the 'OK' button to save the changes, and then press the 'Reload' button.

Yeah, I see what I did there. My bad. I had been trying to install another utility (to correct for the nvidia driver not reporting the correct monitor timings to xorg configure) when I had tried adding sid to /etc/apt/sources.list, simply as an attempt to download my package. That was not following best practices on my part, leaving his package system in a off-standard state.

Thank you for your carefully written instructions.

I'd suggest that you go ahead and remove the Sid repository. It really isn't a good idea. Might get enabled by mistake.