How to remove damaged/corrupted Debian Package

[Armand Delomenie <adl@hert.org>]

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I d like to bring you my contribution to this problem just because i had
it once  and it wasn't so evident to find [for me at least :)]
This help file is  quickly done and with a lot of "fautes d'anglais" but
maybe it will  be helpfull for some you.
Any comments: adl@hert.org
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Suppose you have a nasty package installed, a package with missing
or modified files... normally you sould have this type of stupid message
when tying to remove it:

loom# dpkg -r time
dpkg: error processing time (--remove):
 Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal.
Errors were encountered while processing:

In this example i want to remove the "time" package because he's well
damaged but ... i can't :)

First,
find your problematic deb file (in this exemple "time"), if the file
hasn't been delete after download it should be at:

/var/cache/apt/archives/

copy the problematic package to your home directory

    cp /var/cache/apt/archives/time_1.7-7_i386.deb ~/

[note: if the was deleted by dselect download it again, even manualy]

then do

   cd ~
   mkdir tmp [if you don't have already tmp directory :)]
   dpkg-deb --extract time_1.7-7_i386.deb tmp 

now if you have a look in ~/tmp you should notices the files of the
package in the directories where they should be if they were normaly
installed.
[I hope i'm clear enough :)]
             
copy each files where they should be normally installed by the Package Manager

    ls tmp/usr/bin/time
    cp tmp/usr/bin/time /usr/bin
    ...

At this point you should be able to excute this command:

    dpkg -r --force-remove-reinstreq time

Normaly you'll get something like this:

    dpkg - warning, overriding problem because --force enabled:
     Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
     reinstall it before attempting a removal.
    (Reading database ... 59134 files and directories currently installed.)
    Removing time ...

[If it's not removing at this point check that you didn't forget any files
to be copied]

Now that the files are removed you can purge:

    dpkg --purge time       [Purge time ! ! !]

    loom# dpkg --purge time
    (Reading database ... 59128 files and directories currently installed.)
    Removing time ...
    Purging configuration files for time ...
    loom# dselect
    Reading Package Lists... Done
    Building Dependency Tree... Done

Good, now you can if you want reinstall the package without problems.