Re: WARNING: Re: debhelper & /usr/bin/passwd

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

In article <[🔎] 19990125204530.E748@kitenet.net> you write:
>Joey Hess wrote:
>> I'd say installing debhelper 1.2.28 with --force-conflicts is a _very_ bad
>> idea.
>
>Unfortunatly, it looks like the current version of dpkg has
>--force-overwrite (which is what I meant to say above) enabled by default.
>And so anyone who ran dselect in the past 24 hours and upgraded from
>unstable has probably beeen bitten by this bad package.

My understanding of dpkg/dselect/apt-get isn't extremely good, but
anyway:

I have noticed this behaviour, too. However, at the time, I assumed
the apt-get forced the file to be overwritten because the package
I was installing was required/base (ldso from memory, but this
problem has already been fixed). Now I am not so sure.

Can you be certain that dselect doesn't give dpkg the --force-overwrite
option? 

My versions of dpkg claim that --force-overwrite isn't on be default
(otherwise it should have [*] after it):

dpkg forcing options - control behaviour when problems found:
  warn but continue:  --force-<thing>,<thing>,...
  stop with error:    --refuse-<thing>,<thing>,... | --no-force-<thing>,...
 Forcing things:
  auto-select [*]        (De)select packages to install (remove) them
  dowgrade [*]           Replace a package with a lower version
  configure-any          Configure any package which may help this one
  hold                   Process incidental packages even when on hold
  bad-path               PATH is missing important programs, problems likely
  not-root               Try to (de)install things even when not root
  overwrite              Overwrite a file from one package with another
  overwrite-diverted     Overwrite a diverted file with an undiverted version
  depends-version [!]    Turn dependency version problems into warnings
  depends [!]            Turn all dependency problems into warnings
  conflicts [!]          Allow installation of conflicting packages
  architecture [!]       Process even packages with wrong architecture
  overwrite-dir [!]      Overwrite one package's directory with another's file
  remove-reinstreq [!]   Remove packages which require installation
  remove-essential [!]   Remove an essential package

WARNING - use of options marked [!] can seriously damage your installation.
Forcing options marked [*] are enabled by default.