Bug#864143: closed by Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> (Re: Bug#864143: initramfs-tools: missing dependency on busybox?)

[Dave Love <dave.love@manchester.ac.uk>]

I guess I wrote that badly.

busybox isn't actually required by cryptsetup, just recommended, but it
should be required by something.  The example shows it's possible to
make packages uninstallable, if they pull the initramfs trigger, by
removing busybox, which you can do cleanly as far as apt is concerned:

  # dpkg -l initramfs*
  Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
  | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
  |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
  ||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
  +++-==============-============-============-=================================
  ii  initramfs-tool 0.130        all          generic modular initramfs generat
  ii  initramfs-tool 0.130        all          generic modular initramfs generat
  # dpkg -l busybox*
  Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
  | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
  |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
  ||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
  +++-==============-============-============-=================================
  un  busybox        <none>       <none>       (no description available)
  un  busybox-static <none>       <none>       (no description available)
  # apt-get check
  Reading package lists... Done
  Building dependency tree       
  Reading state information... Done
  #