Hi everyone, I'm having trouble installing/removing sendmail in Debian Sid (well, aptosid -- http://www.aptosid.com -- actually).
I tried to install and it failed: https://pastebin.com/Qu2jRqsn 'apt -f install' did not fix it, nor did 'dpkg --configure -a'. Since it was not essential (and did not install correctly), I tried to uninstall it, but it also fails: ------------------------- # apt remove procmail sendmail sendmail-base sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: procmail sendmail sendmail-base sendmail-bin sendmail-cf sensible-mda 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 to remove and 2 not upgraded. 4 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 4,213 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] (Reading database ... 1537409 files and directories currently installed.) Removing sendmail (8.15.2-11) ... Removing sensible-mda (8.15.2-11) ... Removing sendmail-bin (8.15.2-11) ... Removing sendmail-base (8.15.2-11) ... update-inetd: error: --group is only relevant with --add dpkg: error processing package sendmail-base (--remove): installed sendmail-base package pre-removal script subprocess returned error exit status 255 Removing procmail (3.22-26) ... Removing sendmail-cf (8.15.2-11) ... Errors were encountered while processing: sendmail-base E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) -------------------------------- One notices in the failed install attempt (the pastebin link above): -------------------------- adduser: Warning: The home directory `/var/lib/sendmail' does not belong to the user you are currently creating. update-inetd: warning: cannot add service, /etc/inetd.conf does not exist -------------------------- I had: -------------------------- # ls -ld /var/lib/sendmail drwx------ 2 smmta smmta 4096 Aug 22 15:06 /var/lib/sendmail/ -------------------------- Changing ownership to root did not allow me to uninstall it. Aptosid itself does not come with a mail daemon installed, so I must have installed at some point some daemon that created the /var/lib/sendmail. (If I were to try to install again, I'd probably opt for a lighter alternative, something like ssmtp. So, right now, I just want to remove sendmail.) So, I have sendmail-base stuck as not fully installed. It was recommended I install 'openbsd-inetd' (it was not installed, neither was xinetd), but it still fails to install: https://pastebin.com/sStYqMYi (I also still cannot uninstall it...) Any help would be greatly appreciated!