More adventures in Linux

After a distro upgrade, my Haskell code suddenly stopped compiling. The error message from cabal was less than helpful:

cabal: Package parallel-particle-mc-0.0.1 can't be built on this system.

Okayyy...

Apparently some packages I needed went missing in the upgrade. Tried cabal-installing them, which went without a hitch, but compiling my package still doesn't work.

"You know, " I said to myself, "it's time to upgrade to a newer version of the Haskell Platform anyway."

I thought I'd try the Ubuntu Haskell Platform package. To synaptic! Search! Mark for Installation! Apply! Error! "Fix broken packages first."

Okayyy...

Edit -> Fix Broken Packages and...

"Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages."

To Google! Few pages, all of which suggest a magical incantation along the lines of "

apt-get clean
apt-get auto clean
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

Tried that. Got the tee-shirt. Didn't work.

We'll there's always installing from source...

To Haskell.org! Download Now! Linux!

Don't want the package, tried that already. Download the source. Need a pre-compiled binary. Follow that link. Ignore the suggestion that I download the platform instead, since that what brought me here.

Extract tarball. Open INSTALL. Follow directions.

/usr/bin/install: cannot change permissions of `/usr/local/share/man/man1': No such file or directory

*sigh*. I'm lazy. It's late. Let's just create that directory.

Creating directory: permission denied, /usr/local/share/man/man1

WTF? I'm root dammit! Don't tell me I can't do that!

I don't want to figure this out. I've already wasted to much time on this. Despair. Angst. Wonder if life is worth living. Wonder if Linux is worth using. Wonder if I've had too much wine.

Try the last command outside of emacs-shell.

Oh now it works.

Never had that happen before. No idea why. In the past, eshell has never given me any problems with respect to permissions. What this changed in the upgrade? Is there some other reason?

Even inquiring minds are beyond caring at this point. Will continue this adventure tomorrow. For now, going to have more wine and less whine.

P.S. First attempt at posting this generated an error in blogger:

Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tag is not allowed: META

I didn't put that in there, Blogger, you did! Edit HTML. Remove. Works.