Bug#801850: busybox: readlink gets shadowed by busybox causing debconf to possibly fail

[Olliver Schinagl <oliver+debian@schinagl.nl>]

Package: busybox
Version: 1:1.22.0-15
Severity: important
Tags: newcomer

Dear Maintainer,

When installing busybox's symlink readlink gets installed (without checking)
into /usr/bin/readlink. Some packages require readlink support via debconf (for
example the flash-kernel package) but busybox's readlink does not offer the -m
option. Coreutils however, a requirement for debian and its tools (debconf),
also supplies readlink. With both coreutils and busybox installed however, the
busybox variant gets used before the coreutils variant causing package
failures.

A quick fix/workaround:
if [ -f /bin/readlink ]; then
        unlink /usr/bin/readlink
fi

This on armhf jessie variant using busybox 1:1.22.0-9+deb8u1.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386, armhf

Kernel: Linux 4.3.0-rc1+ (SMP w/4 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages busybox depends on:
ii  libc6  2.19-22

busybox recommends no packages.

busybox suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information