Re: bad package

[Ashok Mudholkar <ashokm@speakeasy.net>]

Well, I ran into a similar enough problem.  I downloaded

   http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~beffara/debian/frcursive_1.0-1_all.deb

and tried to install it using dpkg, only to find that something was 
awry.  The error was only as specific as 'dpkg returned error code 1' or 
so.  Naturally, I tried dpkg -r, but to no avail.  Now dpkg, apt, 
aptitude, and dselect were all bailing because of this failed 
installation.  Maybe it was unsuitable for AM64 architecture--a TeX 
file?--who knows?

Anyhow, after a week of digging around, somehow I noticed someone 
suggesting manually editing /var/lib/dpkg/status to remove entries 
concerning the offending package.  Sensibly, that person also suggests 
backing up /var/lib/dpkg/status before doing so.  Incredibly, I hadn't 
noticed this file in the dpkg man page despite repeated readings looking 
for just such a file.

From there, apt-get update and upgrade should work fine, or so it seems 
so far.  Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than I can amend this or 
correct me.

So, to summarize:

   * bakcup /var/lib/dpkg/status
   * manually edit /var/lib/dpkg/status to remove mention of the
     offending package.
   * apt-get update and you're sailing free, with the one caveat that
     files which may have been unpacked will remain on your system,
     probably invisible to deborphan and the like.


Ashok Mudholkar