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Re: less than useful dselect/dpkg error msg



On Sun, Nov 16, 1997 at 05:50:46AM +0000, Bill Leach wrote:
> Receiving error messages such as the following:
>       Linux# dpkg --configure fvwm2
>        dpkg: error processing fvwm2 (--configure):
>        package fvwm2 is not ready for configuration
>        cannot configure (current status `installed')
>       Errors were encountered while processing:
>        fvwm2
>       Linux#
> 
> are pretty much useless.  This sort of error message reminds
> me of Red Hat's RPM!
> 
> What causes this sort of information free error message?
> Does dpkg honor the 'hold' status in the status file when it
> is placed there by dselect (that is when dpkg is run manually from the command line)?

The error message is less than friendly but there is no mention
of hold status; simply, it says that fvwm2 is not ready for
configuration because it is already installed. installed implies
configured. That is, the package needs no further processing
by dpkg, and you can't configure a package that has already been
configured (or not through dpkg at least).

As I understand it, hold means do not upgrade. dselect will tell
tell dpkg to ignore upgrades to the package, and I guess
dpkg-ftp would also ignore them. But "dpkg -i <file.deb>" will
do it anyway.


Hamish
-- 
Hamish Moffatt, StudIEAust              hamish@debian.org, hmoffatt@mail.com
Student, computer science & computer systems engineering.    3rd year, RMIT.
http://hamish.home.ml.org/ (PGP key here)             CPOM: [*****     ] 59%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.  --Bohr


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