Bug#530633: xterm: Unable to configure package

[Bram Senders <bram@luon.net>]

On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 09:21:17AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Wed, 27 May 2009, Bram Senders wrote:
> > There is also an x-terminal-emulator.1.gz file in
> > /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives, which is not a gzipped file at all, but just
> > contains the contents:
> > 
> > --- 8< ---
> > manual
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > --- >8 ---
> > 
> > (including the three empty lines)  Is this intended?
> 
> The existence of this file is the real problem. update-alternatives only
> create such a file for a master alternative and this one should not exist
> at all.
> 
> What is the timestamp of this file ?
> 
> stat /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator.1.gz

  File: `/var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator.1.gz'
  Size: 10        	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 304h/772d	Inode: 353989      Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
Access: 2009-05-28 11:23:07.000000000 +0200
Modify: 2005-02-25 13:11:37.000000000 +0100
Change: 2008-04-03 00:02:28.000000000 +0200

> Can you check if that time correspond to the upgrade of some terminal
> related package in /var/log/dpkg.log (or aptitude.log if you use it).

Unfortunately, my logs don't go back to april last year. ;-)

> I don't know who/what called update-alternatives with
> x-terminal-emulator.1.gz as master alternative but it's definitely not
> a side-effect of proper usage of update-alternatives.

Alas I don't know either; this box is maintained by multiple people, so
anything might have happened to the terminal alternatives.

[snip]
> Or maybe simply "rm -f
> /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator.1.gz" as it avoids the
> temporary removal of /etc/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator.1.gz (and the
> message "forcing reinstallation of alternative /usr/bin/uxterm because
> link group x-terminal-emulator is broken" later on...).

That solved the problem for me.  Well, not the problem of who broke the
alternatives, but at least xterm is properly installed now again. :-)

Thanks for the detailed help!

Cheers,
Bram