Bug#1001390: xterm / uxterm / lxterm suddenly missing from alternatives
On 2021-12-09 18:39 +0100, Harald Welte wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 09, 2021 at 05:36:03PM +0100, Sven Joachim wrote:
>
>> Probably you have hit bug #1001198 in dpkg 1.21.0, which corrupts the
>> alternatives database.
>
> ugh :( That may very well be.
>
>> Did you upgrade dpkg to version 1.21.1 yet? If not, please do so and
>> report back.
>
> yes, I do have dpkg version 1.21.1 installed [by now]. Should that have
> automagically fixed the corrupted database?
There is a postinst script in dpkg which moves the misplaced files from
/var/lib/dpkg to /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives, but if more than one
package sets up an alternative, that is apparently not enough.
> I couldn't immediately see
> from #1001198 whether any recovery action is required on affected systems.
My recommendation would be to reinstall affected packages like xterm,
and configure the alternatives again. You can grep for "Moving
misplaced alternative state file" in /var/log/apt/term.log to see which
alternatives had been broken by dpkg 1.21.0.
Sometimes Debian unstable lives by its name, although fortunately not
too often.
Cheers,
Sven
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