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error upgrading libc6 - non-dpkg libc6-i686 conflict

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Hi all,

While trying to do some routine package upgrades to my debian lenny machine, apt tried to upgrade libc6 to 2.7-6 and failed as follows:

# apt-get install libc6

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
locales glibc-doc libc6-i686
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libc6
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/4487kB of archives.
After unpacking 10.9MB of additional disk space will be used.
y
E: Cannot get debconf version. Is debconf installed?
debconf: apt-extracttemplates failed: Bad file descriptor(Reading database ... 17 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libc6 (from .../archives/libc6_2.7-6_i386.deb) ...

A non-dpkg owned copy of the libc6-i686 package was found.
It is not safe to upgrade the C library in this situation;
please remove that copy of the C library and try again.
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.7-6_i386.deb (--unpack):
subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.7-6_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I have tried the following:

1 - apt-get -f install - similar result
2 - apt-get update then upgrade - similar results
3 - apt-get install debconf - fails as it depends on libc6. - Catch 22.
4 - removing all instances of libc6-i686 from the system. - no dice

Any Ideas? This looks similar to some recent debian bug reports (Bug#441975) , but those are supposedly resolved. The only discussion of my particular problem seems to be in French, which doesn't help too much.

Thanks in advance.
crud

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error upgrading libc6 -

Submitted by pinniped on Mon, 2008-02-04 03:57.

You can try:
apt-get install --force-yes libc6

Another thing is:

cd /var/cache/apt/archives
dpkg -i --force-all blahblah.deb (name of the libc6 package)

If that doesn't work:

1. Pop in a live CD like Ubuntu/Kubuntu or whatever you like
2. mount your root partition and delete libc6 and all symlinks to it
3. manually unpack the libc6*.deb file (from var/cache/apt/archives of your root directory) into a temporary directory. Use 'ar' to unpack:
ar x blahblah.deb
Then 'tar -zxvf' to unpack any .tar.gz files.
4. Read the pre/post-remove and the pre-install scripts to see how to prepare to install libc6 (just in case there's something special)
5. Manually copy libc6 where it belongs
6. Read the post-install files to see if anything special needs to be done after installing.
7. Reboot and hope it works; if it boots fine etc, you may be able to force a reinstall of libc6 just so the apt-get system is no longer confused about what's installed.

»

The first two didn't work.

Submitted by crud on Mon, 2008-02-04 21:06.

The first two didn't work. I'll give the live cd option a whirl. Thanks.

»

got it (i think)

Submitted by crud on Mon, 2008-02-04 22:47.

The pre-install script has the following section.

Quote:

if [ -e /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 ] || [ -e /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 ] ; then
status_i686=$(dpkg -s libc6-i686 2>/dev/null | grep ^Status: | sed -e 's/^Status: \(.*\) \(.*\) \(.*\)/\3/g')
status_xen=$(dpkg -s libc6-xen 2>/dev/null | grep ^Status: | sed -e 's/^Status: \(.*\) \(.*\) \(.*\)/\3/g')
if ([ -z "$status_i686" ] || [ "$status_i686" = "not-installed" ] || [ "$status_i686" = "config-files" ]) && \
([ -z "$status_xen" ] || [ "$status_xen" = "not-installed" ] || [ "$status_xen" = "config-files" ]); then
echo
echo "A non-dpkg owned copy of the libc6-i686 package was found."
echo "It is not safe to upgrade the C library in this situation;"
echo "please remove that copy of the C library and try again."
exit 1
fi
fi

I temporarily renamed /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 to blah.old and used apt to upgrade libc6. I then did an:

Quote:

apt-get update
apt-get update
apt-get -f install

dpkg installed a fresh copy. Kind of a kluge, but everything seems to work ok. Thanks for getting me on the right track.

»
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