Re: [Bug 111654] texlive-base-bin uninstallable: md5sums unknown

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:

> This is not surprising: From the preinst code:

I didn't look at the full code (need to start preparing dinner for a
hungry wife), but from what you cite I don't understand the problem.

>     check_move $conf_oldpath $cfgfile $version
>
> -> check_move
>     if [ -r "$orig" ] ; then
>         mdorig=$(dpkg_md5sum "$orig")
>
> -> dpkg_md5sum
>     md5sum=$(grep "$file[[:space:]]"  /var/lib/dpkg/status | cut -f 3 -d ' ')
>     if [ -z "$md5sum" ]; then
>         echo "$file: md5sum not known. Exiting" >&2
>         exit 1
>
> Now of course this file didn't exist before ...

If this file doesn't exist, the test in check_move will fail (-r $orig),
and consequently dpkg_md5sum shouldn't be called at all.  How is it
possible that the file is actually there, but not as a conffile? 

> Examining check_move we should do:
> Current version:
>     if [ -r "$orig" ] ; then
>         mdorig=$(dpkg_md5sum "$orig")
>         if [ $(md5sum "$orig" | cut -f 1 -d ' ') = "$mdorig" ] ; then
>             rm "$orig"
>         else
>             mkdir -p $(dirname "$new")
>             mv "$orig" "$new".preinst-copy
>         fi

It doesn't hurt to do it that way.  And it's safer, in case it's not a
single user's misconfiguration, but some special (ubuntu?) version which
put the file there as a non-conffile.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)