[ale] Debian package insanity

[Jason Day]

On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 04:35:46PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> Jason Day wrote:
>   > So, as near as I can determine, I need to uninstall xterm, but I can't
> > uninstall it because it's not installed.  And I can't reinstall it,
> > because it uses a directory that's in xutils, which I also can remove
> > because it doesn't seem to be installed either.
> 
> I would recommend you do this:
> 
>    dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq xterm

spiderman:/home/jday# dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq xterm
(Reading database ... 48227 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing xterm ...
dpkg: error processing xterm (--purge):
 cannot remove file `/usr/X11R6/bin/xterm': Not a directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
 xterm
spiderman:/home/jday# 

I get a similar error for dpkg --purge --pending.

I find it hard to believe that the only way to remove a broken package
is to manually create all the files on the filesystem first, but it's
beginning to look that way.

> Get rid of aptitude.  (dpkg --purge aptitude).  Use dselect instead.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little :-)

Thanks,
Jason
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9