Bug#815897: apache2-utils: Conflicting /usr/sbin/httxt2dbm when upgrading from Squeeze to Jessie

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

Frederik Himpe wrote:
> When upgrading my system from Squeeze to Jessie using apt-get dist-upgrade,
>...

Upgrades are supported from one major release to the next major
release.  The next dist-upgrade from Debian 6 "Squeeze" is to Debian 7
"Wheezy".  This file ownership transition is handled in the Wheezy
upgrade.  Then the next upgrade is to Debian 8 "Jessie".  Going from
Debian 6 Squeeze to Debian 8 Jessie skips the necessary step of the
Debian 7 packages and skips all of the postinst scripts there.  That
is why skipping major releases is not a supportable option.

As such this is not a bug in the apache2 package.  This is simply a
usage error in skipping the required intermediate upgrades along the
way.

Unfortunately there are no easy suggestions for how you can recover
your entire system as the apache packaging is just one example of
this.  However almost certainly there will be other examples found in
other packages.  If you have already upgraded your system you will now
only be able to deal with each and every problem individually
yourself.  Because downgrades are not supported either for similar
reasons you can't downgrade to the Debian 7 and then upgrade again.
Hopefully on your system with your combination of packages there won't
be many problems.  Maybe you will get lucky!

Bob