Re: Stuck package problem

[Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl>]

On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 17:44:45 +0900, Charles Muller wrote:
> This is not strictly laptop-related, but I figured I'd ask here, since 
> I'm already subscribed.
> 
> During a recent Etch install, the package mozilla-firefox-locale-ko 
> failed to install properly, and is now jamming up apt-get. I've tried
> 
> apt-get -f install
> apt-get remove
> apt-get --purge remove
> apt-get clean
> 
> ...and I just can't get rid of the package. For example:
> 
>    xps8250:/home/chuck# apt-get remove mozilla-firefox-locale-ko
>    Reading package lists... Done
>    Building dependency tree... Done
>    The following packages will be REMOVED:
>    mozilla-firefox-locale-ko
>    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
>    1 not fully installed or removed.
>    Need to get 0B of archives.
>    After unpacking 696kB disk space will be freed.
>    Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
>    (Reading database ... 83905 files and directories currently 
>          installed.)
>    Removing mozilla-firefox-locale-ko ...
>    /var/lib/dpkg/info/mozilla-firefox-locale-ko.postrm: line 12: 
> update-mozilla-firefox-chrome: command not found

The "postrm" (post-removal) script has the job to do necessary clean-ups
after a package has been removed. In your case it tries to call
update-mozilla-firefox-chrome to de-register the locale with firefox. It
seems that this command is missing on your system. You should check if
it is there: /usr/sbin/update-mozilla-firefox-chrome. It is part of the
mozilla-firefox package, which should be installed since the locale-ko
package depends on it. If that file is missing, then you should
(re)install mozilla-firefox, at least temporarily until you have removed
the locale-ko package.

If apt-get is completely jammed and does not let you (re)install
firefox, you can use the following dirty trick:

As root, do

ln -s /bin/true /usr/sbin/update-mozilla-firefox-chrome

This will create a fake update-mozilla-firefox-chrome which just points
to /bin/true, a command which is always successful. The postrm script
will then not notice anymore that the update command is missing and it
will complete "successfully" as far as apt is concerned. So now you
should be able to run

apt-get install -f

and the locale-ko package will be gone. Do not forget to remove the
symlink again afterwards

rm /usr/sbin/update-mozilla-firefox-chrome

or you might run into trouble the next time you want to install
mozilla-firefox.

-- 
Regards,
          Florian