remove or install a broken package

[Bill Moseley <moseley@hank.org>]

Haste make waste, as it always turns out.

I installed ipmasq and iptables.  I then tried to remove both packages but
ipmasq choked:

# apt-get remove ipmasq
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  ipmasq 
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
2 packages not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 455kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 10517 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing ipmasq ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ipmasq.prerm: /etc/init.d/ipmasq: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing ipmasq (--remove):
 subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ipmasq
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The other package is iptables -- I want that installed (i just want the
iptables program not the save/restore stuff from init.d).

So I then tried to install iptables again, but since ipmasq is still
partially installed itables tried to write ppp into /etc/ipmasq but that's
gone.

So, now I've two broken packages.

Anyway, I've tried --force and dpkg --configure ipmasq but can't seem to
get anywhere.  This is something I should know, but first time something
has been this broken.

What's the trick purge the packages and start over?

Thanks,



-- 
Bill Moseley
mailto:moseley@hank.org