Bug#893424: Cannot uninstall package

[Andreas Beckmann <anbe@debian.org>]

On 2018-03-18 19:43, Ryan Kavanagh wrote:
> Removing sendmail-base (8.15.2-10) ...
> rm: cannot remove '/etc/mail/m4': Is a directory
> dpkg: error processing package sendmail-base (--remove):
>  installed sendmail-base package pre-removal script subprocess returned error exit status 123

> ls -alR /etc/mail:
> /etc/mail:
> total 24
> drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   138 Mar 18 14:32 .
> drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  5364 Mar 18 13:50 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   281 Jan 13 17:43 address.resolve
> drwxr-xr-x 1 root root     0 Jan 13 17:43 m4

Interesting. The empty directory shows up with size 0.
What filesystem do you use for / ?

The error should be triggered by this line in the prerm:
                # Remove empty files (probably touched databases)
                find /etc/mail -maxdepth 1 -size 0 | xargs -r rm;

Please run these two commands:

$ find /etc/mail -maxdepth 1 -size 0
$ find /etc/mail -maxdepth 1 -type f -size 0

The first should output /etc/mail/m4, the second should output nothing.


Andreas