dpkg/apt getting Section line wrong

[Stuart Ballard <sballard@netreach.net>]

I think this is a bug and I'm wondering whether I should file it in the
BTS. The problem is, looking at the current bug lists for dpkg and apt,
filing bugs against them seems to be more or less a waste of time. Also,
I don't know which one has the problem. But the problem is:

I use apt more-or-less exclusively to keep my system up to date (which
invokes dpkg, obviously). However, /var/lib/dpkg/status (and hence dpkg
-s) disagrees with /var/state/apt/lists/* about the Section line of some
packages. Apt is correct. It appears that dpkg is using *old* sections
and not updating the section line when the package is upgraded. The
examples I have found were identified by vrms; the following entries are
in error:

ssh: dpkg says non-US/non-free, but apt knows that it's really just in
non-US
dnsutils: dpkg says non-free/net, apt says just net

Is it legal to hand-modify /var/lib/dpkg/status? I'd like to get these
packages out of my vrms output, if nothing else. Is there some other way
to do this?

Better yet: What should I do about getting this fixed? I don't even know
what package the bug should be against, and either of the likely
candidates seem to more-or-less ignore bug reports. I don't mind looking
through source code to try to figure out the problem, but I don't want
to have to download 100 -dev packages before I can even try. Any
suggestions?

Thanks,
Stuart.


PS I discussed this already in the thread "Non-freeness", but I didn't
discover the actual problem until very deep in the thread.