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

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hallo Norbert,

this mail is marked as "answer-awaiting" ;-) for some time now.  I think
there's already working code in the package, but could you nevertheless
have a look?  Fullquote follows...

Frank Küster <frank@debian.org> wrote:

> 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)