Re: apt & dselect failure to remove mozilla

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 02:07:54PM -0800, Jaye Inabnit ke6sls wrote:
> On Thursday 21 November 2002 10:17 am, you wrote:
[...]
> > Removing mozilla-psm ...
> > Updating mozilla chrome registry...ln: creating symbolic link
> > `/usr/lib/mozilla/chrome/overlayinfo'
> > to `/var/lib/mozilla/chrome/overlayinfo': No such file or directory
> > dpkg: error processing mozilla-psm (--remove):
> >  subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1

[Stephen]

> Try apt-get remove --purge mozilla
> 
> That should force the removal of mozilla-psm and anything else that
> depends on it.  
[...]
> Stephen:
> 
> I already tried this approach.  I also attempted to use dselect, then, as a 
> last ditch resort, I tried with dpkg directly.  These all failed.  BTW, I 
> always use the --purge option anyway to make sure I remove any config files.

When a post-removal script fails, none of dpkg, dselect, or apt-get will
help. Instead, you need to inspect /var/lib/dpkg/info/mozilla-psm.postrm
(the script that's failing in this case), and either tweak the system so
that it succeeds or comment out the parts of the script that fail.

Plus, of course, make sure that a bug is filed.

Using, say, 'apt-get remove --purge' is common advice in this situation;
I'm not sure why, as it just calls down to dpkg and fails in exactly the
same way.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]