On Sun, Apr 12, 2009 at 03:07:50 -0500, M. Lewis wrote:
I'm having an issue with Aptitude that I'm not sure how to correct. I
was having an issue with OpenOffice so I decided the easiest way to
resolve the problem might be to completely remove it, then re-install
it. That is when the problem began. Aptitude hung trying to remove
openoffice.org-writer2latex.
That indicates a problem with the pre-removal script of this package;
aptitude cannot do much about that.
I ended up aborting the process and went on
about my business. Tonight I needed to install ksensors on the same
machine when the OpenOffice problem again reared its ugly head.
The openoffice.org-writer2latex package is in a broken state on your
system (incomplete removal), therefore aptitude has to try to fix it
before it can perform actions on other packages.
rattler:~# aptitude install ksensors
[...]
Removing openoffice.org-writer2latex ...
At this point, aptitude will sit here for as long as you are willing to
wait. On another terminal, I did 'ps ax'. The relevant portions follow:
4726 pts/3 Sl+ 0:03 aptitude install ksensors
4757 pts/6 Ss+ 0:00 /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 24
--force-depends --force-remove-essential --remove
openoffice.org-writer2latex
4758 pts/6 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh
/var/lib/dpkg/info/openoffice.org-writer2latex.prerm remove
4759 pts/6 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh
/var/lib/dpkg/info/openoffice.org-writer2latex.prerm remove
4760 pts/6 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg
list --shared
4761 pts/6 S+ 0:00 grep Identifier:.*writer2latex
4762 pts/6 S+ 0:00 cut -d: -f2
4780 pts/6 S+ 0:00 /usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconfd-2 4
4802 pts/6 R+ 0:11 /usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg.bin list
--shared -env:JFW_PLUGIN_DO_NOT_CHECK_ACCESSIBILITY=1
-env:UNO_JAVA_JFW_INSTALL_DATA=$$ORIGIN/../share/config/javasettingsunopkginstall.xml
-env:UserInstallation=fi
[...]
It seems that the pre-removal script gets stuck while trying to
determine the full name of the writer2latex extension. You can try this
yourself:
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg list --shared | grep latex
If that command comes up empty or if it hangs then you might have to
comment out every invocation of /usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg in
/var/lib/dpkg/info/openoffice.org-writer2latex.prerm and run "aptitude
install -f" to get the broken package off your system.