What's going on is that a base sarge system looks like this: kodama:/usr/doc# ls -l total 0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jan 5 22:41 at -> ../share/doc/at lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jan 5 22:41 cpio -> ../share/doc/cpio lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Jan 5 22:41 ipchains -> ../share/doc/ipchains lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 Jan 5 22:41 klogd -> ../share/doc/klogd lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Jan 5 22:41 liblockfile1 -> ../share/doc/liblockfile1 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Jan 5 22:41 sysklogd -> ../share/doc/sysklogd kodama:/usr/doc# dpkg -S /usr/doc base-files: /usr/doc When this is upgraded to etch, base-files is upgraded before most of these symlink containing packages. So dpkg cannot remove the /usr/doc directory despite that being the last package to own it. The symlinks are eventually removed, but the directory remains. (Reading database ... 7749 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace base-files 3.1.2 (using .../archives/base-files_4_i386.deb) ... Unpacking replacement base-files ... dpkg: warning - unable to delete old file `/usr/doc': Directory not empty Setting up base-files (4) ... BTW, there are also crufty old systems where /usr/doc contains a mess of broken symlinks due to broken old packages that were removed before being fixed, or possibly due to upgrade bugs in existing packages that we've missed: <Sesse> joeyh: heh. I actually have tons of stuff left in /usr/doc; most of it from 1998, though. :-) <Sesse> six symlinks, though. probably left over in some upgrade... <Sesse> joeyh: well... tftpd-hpa, raidtools2, python, freefont, fai, dhcp, at <Sesse> all but python and freefont are simply gone The following in base-files's postinst would fix both issues. if [ -d /usr/doc ] && [ ! -L /usr/doc ]; then find /usr/doc -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type l -print0 | xargs -0 rm -f rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /usr/doc 2>/dev/null fi -- see shy jo
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