Help - Apparent conflict between libmagic1 and file packages during upgrade to squeeze

[Drew MacDonald <drew.mirage@gmail.com>]

Hi All,

I have been running a stable copy of lenny for the last 2 years without any
issues (or use of unstable or testing packages).  Tonight I attempted to upgrade
to squeeze and have encountered an apparent conflict between the 'libmagic1' and
'file' packages which are preventing me from completing the upgrade.  I have
done the following steps:

1) apt-get update
2) apt-get dist-upgrade

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  file: Depends: libmagic1 (= 5.04-5) but 4.26-1 is installed
  libmagic-dev: Depends: libmagic1 (= 5.04-5) but 4.26-1 is installed
  libpango1.0-0: Depends: libthai0 (>= 0.1.12) but 0.1.9-4+lenny1 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

3) apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libio-compress-zlib-perl libcompress-raw-zlib-perl libio-compress-base-perl
libcgi-fast-perl
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libmagic1 libthai-data libthai0
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libdatrie0
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libmagic1 libthai-data libthai0
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 432 not upgraded.
5 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/472kB of archives.
After this operation, 180kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
(Reading database ... 44651 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libmagic1 4.26-1 (using .../libmagic1_5.04-5_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libmagic1 ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libmagic1_5.04-5_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/etc/magic.mime', which is also in package file 5.04-5
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libmagic1_5.04-5_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

4) apt-get autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done

5) apt-get clean all

6) retrying apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade with the same results as above

7) Various combinations of install and remove for both packages and their
dependencies for which there is either some unmet dependency and/or a reference
to /etc/magic.mime.  I googled and could not find anything about a conflict
between the 'file' and 'libmagic1' packages, nor could I find anything on
/etc/magic.mime that seemed relevant.

Any pointers or suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards