Re: apt wickened up: Unable to purge package gdm2 !
Try redirecting the output to a file then you can blook at the output
dpkg --purge packagename >dpkg.file 2>&1 &
packagename is the package name of your package to remove
Barry
On Wed, 29 Jan 2003, michaw wrote:
> Hello List !
> Usually apt/itude works without problems here. But this time seems i kicked
> it really bad.... :|
>
> I upgraded to Gnome2 for woody on i386 and decided at one point to purge gdm2.
> Well there was this warning 'directory /etc/gdm/<some> not empty so not
> removed', leaving it half-configured.
> Since i suspect Gnome to be still to be sensible with obsolet configs i just
> removed /etc/gdm completely by hand.
> I thought that a complete 'purge' would left no remainders,
> so why problems with that if I know I don't need the configs anymore ??
>
> Btw I didn't ever run gdm before. There could have been only defaults.
>
> Now i decided to install the 'old' gdm instead ( I refer to as gdm1 now),
> purged gdm2 again just to see what it says now.
> Now, this second 'purge' still left the package 'half-configured' !
> With an error message shown from subprocess dpkg:
>
> Error Code(1) while processing gdm2, unable to access the archive -- file not
> found ( please note: i translate from german what i understood was the
> meaning here ).
>
> Next two hours i tried a lot of tricky things.
> Install again, reinstall, reconfigure, remove, purge,
> ( however, i didn't manage the syntax of --force-reinstreq ),
> with apt and with dpkg and at least even tried dselect -- nothing worked,
> same error.
> I wasn't able to purge gdm2 !
>
> It's impossible to read the first occuring error messages because it's
> immediateley replaced by the colored chooser ... and no logs in var... :|
> Sometimes the error is additional refered to as No. 10...At one point i
> catched a glimpse it's postrm complaining.
>
> So i looked upt that script, and then compared the files in /etc/gdm to
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/gdm{1,2}. With gdm1 installed (aptitude) (!) I noticed
> two *mysterious* circumstances there:
>
> /etc/gdm ( which never got removed at all ) is empty.
> No sessions, gdm.conf.... thus the installation went totally wrong, but from
> aptitude is shown up successful !
>
> And: In /var/lib/dpkg/info/ therere are all the gdm2-files like gdm2.list,
> but no gdm1 files at all.
>
> gdm simply isn't completely installed, and can't be managed no more at all.
>
>
> I reloaded the files several times from CD, so could there be a corruption
> not detecded by the md5sum ? I use official woody 3.0 r1 cd's from a well
> known german seller, plus 2 extra-cd's with gnome2 and kde3 for woody, don't
> know the source.
>
> On the other hand, can the apt-database get corrupted using aptitude ?
> And still i can't get it: purging should be possible anyway ?
>
> I'm worried about trusting either me or Gnome or apt no more...
> now what i really would like to have is a clean system and database...just to
> feel trusting again.
>
> Help greatly appreciated !
>
>
> --
> mich{a,l}.
>
>
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