On Etch can't to remove a broken package

On Wed, Jan 03, 2007 at 18:24:30 +0100, csanyipal wrote:
> Hello!
>
> On Etch I have installed a package: ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386 that I
> have been downloaded. This installation wasn't success.
>
> After that this package came to be broken.
>
> If I try to remove this package, I get an error message:
>
> ------------------>
> (Reading database ... 60952 files and directories currently installed.)
> Removing ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386 ...
> find: warning: you have specified the -mindepth option after a
> non-option argument -name, but options are not positional \
> (-mindepth affects tests specified before it as well as those \
> specified after it). Please specify options before other \
> arguments.
>
> find: warning: you have specified the -maxdepth option after a
> non-option argument -name, but options are not positional \
> (-maxdepth affects tests specified before it as well as \
> those specified after it). Please specify options before \
> other arguments.
>
> Could not identify your distribution's way of automatically \
> loading modules, Exiting.
>
> dpkg: error processing ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386 (--remove):
> subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> ------------------<
>
> What can I do to solve this problem?

ltmodem is not an official Debian package. I think I know how to fix
your problem, but please realize that I have not tested this. Use the
following advice at your own risk.

The post-removal script seems to have a bug: It looks for
/etc/modprobe.conf (which is absent on a standard Etch system) and
/etc/modprobe.d/ltmodem (which is missing because the package
installation failed). Finding neither file, the script assumes that
something is wrong with your modprobe infrastructure and it exits with
an error.

I think you can trick the script by creating a small dummy file which
looks like it was generated during the ltmodem installation. The postrm
script can then remove this dummy file and it will be happy that it did
its job. Make sure that /etc/modprobe.d/ltmodem does not exist and run
(as root)

echo "# lt_serial" > /etc/modprobe.d/ltmodem

I would expect that you can remove the package normally after you do
this.

--
Regards,
Florian

--

On Wednesday 03 January 2007 10:24, csanyipal wrote:
> On Etch I have installed a package: ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386 that I
> have been downloaded. This installation wasn't success.
>
> After that this package came to be broken.
>
> If I try to remove this package, I get an error message:
>
> ------------------>
> (Reading database ... 60952 files and directories currently installed.)
> Removing ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386 ...
> find: warning: you have specified the -mindepth option after a
> non-option argument -name, but options are not positional \
> (-mindepth affects tests specified before it as well as those \
> specified after it). Please specify options before other \
> arguments.
>
> find: warning: you have specified the -maxdepth option after a
> non-option argument -name, but options are not positional \
> (-maxdepth affects tests specified before it as well as \
> those specified after it). Please specify options before \
> other arguments.
>
> Could not identify your distribution's way of automatically \
> loading modules, Exiting.
>
> dpkg: error processing ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386 (--remove):
> subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> ------------------<
>
> What can I do to solve this problem?
>
> I appreciate any advices.

Well, it's not removing correctly because it's failing in it's post-rm
script. If you just want to force the package out, you can do the
following:

dpkg -r --force-all ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386

If that still doesn't work, you will have to hack the post-rm script to exit
with success, i.e. edit /var/lib/dpkg/info/ltmodem-2.6.8-2-386.postrm and
either fix the error, or just make the script do an unconditional "exit 0".

The second method is a rather hackish ways to do it, but it'll definitely
work.

--
Wesley J. Landaker
OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094 0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2