[H-GEN] more debian apt-get fun.

Jonathon M. Abbott s362814 at student.uq.edu.au
Sat Apr 7 04:48:50 EDT 2001


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On Sat, Apr 07, 2001 at 11:38:34AM +1000, Mark Venz wrote:
> Following on from a previous email,
> I am trying to reinstall x in debian kind of way.
> I have been running into errors of the type below.
> 
> my path to this point:

<command history snipped>

> The screen output after 580, and a whole stack above:

> 0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 138  not upgraded.
> 112 packages not fully installed or removed.
> Need to get 0B/371kB of archives. After unpacking 907kB will be used.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
> (Reading database ... 51724 files and directories currently installed.)
> Unpacking gnome-help (from .../gnome-help_1.4.0.1-1_i386.deb) ...
> dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/gnome-help_1.4.0.1-1_i386.deb (--unpack):
>  trying to overwrite `/usr/share/gnome/help/help-browser/C/help-browser.html', which is also in package gnome-help-data
> dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  /var/cache/apt/archives/gnome-help_1.4.0.1-1_i386.deb
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

If you've got conflicts like this, you can use 
dpkg --force-overwrite \
-i /var/cache/apt/archive/gnome-help_1.4.0.1-1_i386.deb
This is (usually) a bad idea, and a sign of a bug in the
packages concerned. But I seem to recall having to do this with
gnome-help packages at one point myself.

Another command to try:

dpkg --configure --pending
  This will configure all the packages that are unpacked, but
  not set up yet.

There are also some more --force- options to dpkg, man dpkg to
find out about them. Use with caution.

-- 
Jonathon M. Abbott                    s362814 at student.uq.edu.au
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom
whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow.

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