Comment 30 for bug 25620

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2005 23:31:45 +0100
From: Eric Valette <email address hidden>
To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Frank_K=FCster?= <email address hidden>
CC: Joey Hess <email address hidden>, Norbert Preining <email address hidden>,
 <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>,
 teTeX maintainers <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#338587: tex-common fails to install

Frank K=FCster wrote:

> which means that all lines with calls to db_* end with || true except
> for db_version and db_go. This seems to indicate to me that *if* we
> made an error with debconf, it wouldn't reveal itself as a failing
> maintainer script.

The full error message is included in the first post. It was indeed an
error message from debconf. I also serched in the postinst script to
show the line that caused the problem but unfortunately it does not
helps because it depends on dynamic content of a parameter.

> I don't see how a configuration file could be on your system that is
> neither any old known nor the new version unless one of two things
> happened:

> - it was a problem with your local debconf installation, and it was in
> fact fixed by reinstalling it, although you first said it wasn't (how
> did you check?). =20

When you do "apt-get install --reinstall dialog debconf" and then
apt-get -f install, whitout fixing the problem, I think I can say it did
not change. I also tried to reconfigure debconf with "dpkg-reconfigure
debconf" to put readline instead of dialog but this did not help either.

> In this case, the postinst script failed right while
> loading confmodule, and never got to the file changed dialog.

Correct. I never saw the dialog before running "sh -x ./postinst
configure" by hand. As far as I know, I did not edit any file by hand,
installed several packages which lead to try the postinst procedure
several time without changing anything.

OK. Do not waste your time any further, I have now a fully functionnal
system and as you cannot reproduce this bug, I propose to close it. Use
it as an hint if someone else comes with a similar problem.

I had corrupted debconf database once and yes it can cause problem on
any package but it has been working for months without problem.

--=20
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