On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 05:28:49AM -0700, David Wright wrote: > Okay, I have calmed down a bit since I sent my "kill, kill, kill" mail, > and now have some more rationally formulated questions about package > management. > > 1) Is there any way to force dpkg to remove as much of a package as it > can and then liquidate the entry from its database, regardless of > whatever error codes any scripts return, thus allowing you to start over > from a pristine pre-install state? Something like > dpkg --force-do-it-or-else --remove PackageName
Stick 'exit 0' on the second line of the postrm script (/var/lib/dpkg/info/packagename.postrm). The various --force options are listed in 'dpkg --force-help'. I don't think ignoring errors from postrm scripts is among them (perhaps it should be, I don't know). > 2) Is there any way to tell dpkg to mark a specific package with a hold > flag without going through the dselect menus? I always end up getting > lost and doing things I don't want to in dselect, and I really want to > be able to just type something like > dpkg --flag hold PackageName > at the command line. echo packagename hold | dpkg --set-selections > 3) Is there any way to export the entire package database from one > machine and then tell another machine to install exactly those packages > (i.e. not only install the missing ones but also remove the extra ones)? > Again, I would like to avoid the dselect interface like the plague. dpkg --get-selections \* > selections # move the selections file to the other machine dpkg --set-selections < selections dselect install remove # no, this doesn't put you into the dselect interface itself Giving the \* argument to dpkg --get-selections causes it to list all packages, including purged ones. > 4) It seems that sometimes packages get into a "deselect ok installed" > state from which it is impossible to do anyting. Is these some way to > force-change the associated flags? 'deselect ok installed' means that it's installed but you want to remove it. What problems are you having? (It's possible to edit /var/lib/dpkg/status to change state flags, but really don't do that unless you already know everything about what you're doing.) Cheers, -- Colin Watson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]