Transferring conffiles between packages (Re: Bug#564254: conflicting /etc/bash_completion)

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Guillem et al,

Sorry to revive this old thread.

On 2010-01-08, Kurt Roeckx wrote:

> I got this on the buildd:
> Unpacking bash-completion (from .../bash-completion_1%3a1.1-3_all.deb) ...
> dpkg: error processing /home/buildd/build/chroot-unstable/var/cache/apt/archives/bash-completion_1%3a1.1-3_all.deb
> (--unpack): trying to overwrite `/etc/bash_completion', which is also in package bash
> 
> On the system:
> excelsior:~# ls -l /etc/bash_completion
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 215907 Jul  5  2006 /etc/bash_completion
> excelsior:~# dpkg --search /etc/bash_completion
> bash: /etc/bash_completion
> 
> This is with bash 4.0-7.

The message is in tarobject().  I think dpkg 1.13.14~19 (Improve
processing of disappearing conffiles, 2006-02-10) was supposed to deal
with this case:

   If the file to be unpacked is (1) a conffile in the new package and
   (2) a regular file rather than a symlink or directory, and some
   installed conffile with the same inode is obsolete, then let the
   installation continue.

Checking on snapshot.debian.org, I see that /etc/bash_completion was
indeed a conffile in bash-completion 1:1.1-3.

Any idea what could have gone wrong?

Jonathan

Kurt Roeckx wrote:

> At some point in time the chroot had the version from oldstable
> or older, just like all my chroots and main systems.  And I have
> upgraded from that version.  I never installed bash-completion.
> But now some pacakge build-depends on that for some strange reason,
> and I get that error.