Re: Do I need to reinstall the whole system?

[Philippe Grenard <philippe.grenard@m4x.org>]

Le Lundi 24 Octobre 2005 23:39, anoop aryal a écrit :
> On Monday 24 October 2005 03:28 pm, Philippe Grenard wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >
> > well, last time I did a dist-upgrade , the system hanged, and even the
> > "magic keys" didn't answered, so I had to reboot the system.
> >
> > After that, there was one package that i couldn't upgrade, nor install,
> > nor uninstall. (xserver-xorg to be precise)
> >
> > So after somme googling, I tried to edit
> > /var/lib/dpkg/status
> > /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates
> > and remove the entries of xserver-xorg
> > I also removed /var/lib/dpkg/info/xserver-xorg.* (preinst, postinst,
> > prerm, postrm, and so on)
> >
> > but the system still won't install the package. It always failed during
> > the preinst script it seems :
> >
> >  root # dpkg -i
> > /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg_6.8.2.dfsg.1-9_i386.deb (Lecture de
> > la base de données... 134036 fichiers et répertoires déjà installés.)
> > Dépaquetage de xserver-xorg (à partir
> > de .../xserver-xorg_6.8.2.dfsg.1-9_i386.deb) ...
> > dpkg : erreur de traitement
> > de /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg_6.8.2.dfsg.1-9_i386.deb
> > (--install) : le sous-processus pre-installation script a retourné une
> > erreur de sortie d'état 1
> > Des erreurs ont été rencontrées pendant l'exécution :
> >  /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg_6.8.2.dfsg.1-9_i386.deb
> >
> > ( it's in french, but basically, it says that there was an error during
> > dpkg during preinst script with an error or exit code 1)
> >
> > Well, the questions are :
> > - How to make the system believe that the package isn't (or is) install,
> > in order to remove and reinstall it properly
> > - Is there a way to "run the dpkg process" step by step by hand with only
> > some basic commands as cp, rm, mv, mkdir, .... to see where there is a
> > problem - any other idea?
> > - Do I need to reinstall the whole system?
>
> i would try:
>
> aptitude reinstall <the-package>
>
> and see if it helps.
>
> anoop.
>

Hi, thanks, 

Actually I tried all I could with the system's tools (dpkg, aptitude, apt-get) 
with a lot of "option" (install , install --reinstall, remove, remove 
--purge, ....) whith the same error

Philippe

> > I thank you all for any help!
> > I already tried a lot of google but i couldn't find a solution to this
> > problem.
> > I also don't mind to read a lot of useful stuff if anybody has some
> > ideas.
> >
> > Thanks a lot for any useful link or idea!!!