Re: Can;t fix doc-base installation problem

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 10:49:03AM -0800, Gary Roach wrote:
> Hi everyone:
> 
> I've had to restore one of my systems from cold iron. Aptitude seems

I guerss you are using unstable.

> to be hanging up when trying to install / purge / update doc-base.
> I've tried Aptitude, dpkg and apt-get including the -f switch with
> no  joy. Below is a typical example:
> 
>    root@mycomputer:/home/gary# aptitude purge doc-base
>    The following packages will be REMOVED:
>       doc-base{p}

Did you check our BTS?
 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=648936
This looks like one you hit.

>    0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
>    Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 504 kB will be freed.
>    Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
>    (Reading database ... 297009 files and directories currently installed.)
>    Removing doc-base ...


Now calling 
 /var/lib/dpkg/info/doc-base.prerm

>    cannot find install-docs on path

This is the problem.

If I were you, I will try following as work around.  But before doing
this, check all discussion on the above mentioned BTS.  There may be
better ways.

You should see in /var/lib/dpkg/info/doc-base.prerm:
case "$1" in
    remove)
        remove_all_docs
        ;;
    upgrade)
        ;;
    failed-upgrade)
        # Prepare to upgrade from version $2 of this package TO THIS VERSION.
        # This is only used if the old version's prerm couldn't handle it,
        # and returned non-zero.  (Fix old prerm bugs here.)
        ;;
esac

Edit this to be:

case "$1" in
    remove)
        true
        ;;
    upgrade)
        ;;
    failed-upgrade)
        # Prepare to upgrade from version $2 of this package TO THIS VERSION.
        # This is only used if the old version's prerm couldn't handle it,
        # and returned non-zero.  (Fix old prerm bugs here.)
        ;;
esac

and try removing this again.  This is just work around.  If there are
other issues, please work around issues.

I think by installing newer version of doc-base, this should fix this.
...