Packages not removable because the `/etc/init.d/package stop' fails.

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Hi all,

It seems that some packaged daemons use a combination of scripts that
sometimes makes them difficult to remove on Etch:

 - prerm stops the daemon and exits if it fails

 - /etc/init.d/package stops the daemon using start-stop-daemon and
   fails if it was not running.

As a result, if the daemon is not running, postrm fails and the package
can not be removed. See #489366 for example. Now I wonder how to deal
with that kind of problem. It could be solved at the package level,
except that such bug but is probably not grave enough for the package to
be updated in Etch. I reported a bug on start-stop-daemon on
its Etch version, but this was closed by the dpkg maintainers, as the
problem is not affecting Lenny.

I think that not being able to easily remove packages in Etch can be an
annoyance when upgrading to Lenny, and I suppose that other daemons are
affected. Do you think that submitting a paragraph to the release notes
would be appropriate or is there something better to do?

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Debian-Med packaging team,
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan