dpkg errors from apt-get dselect-upgrade

[John Bazik <jsb@cs.brown.edu>]

I solved a problem I've been working on and, since I was unable to
google an answer previously, I thought I'd post here to share, and
for comment.

I'm working on an automated installation, using fai and some
home-grown scripts.  We use fai to do a minimal install, and rely on
the latter to do the bulk of the work.  To install a set of packages,
we "dpkg --set-selections" a list, and then run "apt-get dselect-upgrade"
to actually install.

These are woody systems, btw:
	dpkg 1.9.18
	apt 0.5.4

With a list of between 500 and 600 packages, this barfs.  It appears
that when circular package dependencies are broken, dpkg can produce an
error when configuring packages out of order.  Some example packages are
gaim and gaim-common, and xemacs21 and xemacs21-support.  Although all
dependencies are accounted for in the selection list, dpkg still produces
an error like

	gaim depends on gaim-common; however:
	gaim-common is not configured yet

I discovered that this goes away when I put "--force-configure-any"
in my apt.conf file under the DPkg section, however, this introduces a
different error.  Everything gets configured just fine, but dpkg attempts
to configure some things twice and generates an error on the second try.
It says something like

	package gaim is already installed and configured

Dispairing of my non-error errors, and with further trials, I
found that this could be quieted by adding "--force-auto-select" to
apt.conf.

My attempts to narrow the problem, by installing only the seemingly
problem-inducing packages, yielded no errors.  The problems arise only
for large numbers (or some undetermined combinations) of packages.

With both options, I have a workaround.  But the behavior is strange.
I'm not sure this would be a helpful bug report, so I'm just throwing
it out there.

John