[Aptitude-devel] Bug#724887: Bug#724887: dpkg: warning: ignoring request to remove iproute which isn't installed

[Axel Beckert]

Control: tag -1 + confirmed

Hi jidanni,

thanks for this bug report.

jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
> # aptitude purge ~c
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   iproute{p}
> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
> dpkg: warning: ignoring request to remove iproute which isn't installed
> # aptitude purge ~c
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
>   iproute{p}
> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
> dpkg: warning: ignoring request to remove iproute which isn't installed

We've run into that, too, while running aptitude-robot --which also
calls "aptitude purge ~c" in our case (via some trigger.post).

We suspected it may be related to multi-arch. Does your box on which
this happened use multi-arch? (Or is it the same box as in #724032 and
#724034 which does not use multi-arch according to #724034?)

It may be related to http://bugs.debian.org/724032 and
http://bugs.debian.org/724034. Actually I already had this in mind,
when you reported those two issues.

Without looking at the code, just at the symptoms, there are multiple
ideas where this could come from -- all of them would be bugs:

* aptitude's knowledge about which package has been only removed and
  which has been purged got out of sync with dpkg's knowledge.

* It doesn't correctly handle multi-arch correctly on the ~c pattern.
  If your machine isn't multi-arch, this idea could proven wrong now,
  which would narrowed the source for the issue.

* For some reason aptitude's "~c" pattern matches also purged
  packages, not only removed packages. (This may be the same thing as
  the first idea, just seen from some other side.)

I remember that Elmar Heeb (Cc'ed) found a reliable way to get rid of
this state, but at the moment I can't remember it.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
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