aptitude fails to remove a package

Prev		Next

Newsgroups:  gmane.linux.debian.user
Date:        Tue, 29 Aug 2006 02:22:12 +0800

> I wanted to replace my tetex-installation with texlive. But something
> went wrong. Now the dvipdfmx is installed, but I need to get rid of it
> before I can install anything else, but aptitude complains, that
> mktexlsr is not installed, and therefore exits the uninstall of
> dvipdfmx.
>
> ...
>
> Is there a way to force a package-removal? (I have tried to purge the
> package)?

dpkg -P --force-all dvipdfmx

if not work, then

mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/dvipdfmx* /tmp
aptitude purge dvipdfmx

apt-get remove --purge dvipdfmx

Jeff Zhang

aptitude fails to remove a package

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 10:32:01AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

> > Aptitude output:
> > (Reading database ... 195256 files and directories currently
> > installed.) Removing dvipdfmx ...
> > /var/lib/dpkg/info/dvipdfmx.postrm: line 6: /usr/bin/mktexlsr: No such
> > file or directory
> > dpkg: error processing dvipdfmx (--remove):
> >  subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 127 dpkg:
> >  error processing preview-latex-style (--remove):
> >   Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
> >    reinstall it before attempting a removal. terminate called after
> >    throwing an instance of 'std::logic_error'
> >
> you can work around this one of two ways:
>
> 1. Install the package that contains mktexlsr, purge dvipdfmx and then
> remove the package you just installed. 2. As root, touch
> /usr/bin/mktexlsr, chmod +x /usr/bin/mktexlsr, purge dvipdfmx, rm
> /usr/bin/mktexlsr.

Solution number 2 worked.

After this I removed all TeX-related program/packages, and could install TeTex without problems. Again I removed this, and tried TeXLive, but got the same problem again. There must be a bug in TeXLive - package. Or I have messed more things on my system :-)

So I went through the steps in #2-solution and have now a working TeTeX installation.

Thank you for your assistance.

/severino