[Debconf-devel] Bug#707987: debconf: dpkg-reconfigure -a fails if same package is installed on multiple architectures

[Peter Verbaan]

Package: debconf
Version: 1.5.50
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?

Running "dpkg-reconfigure -a" on my system.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

See previous question.

   * What was the outcome of this action?

The process halted with the following error message:
dpkg-query: error: --status needs a valid package name but 'gcc-4.7-base' is not: ambiguous package name 'gcc-4.7-base' with more than one installed instance

Use --help for help about querying packages.


   * What outcome did you expect instead?

All my packages to be reconfigured without errors popping up.


Upon investigation I noticed the following:

# dpkg-query --list gcc-4.7-base
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
ii  gcc-4.7-base:a 4.7.3-3      amd64        GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection 
ii  gcc-4.7-base:i 4.7.3-3      i386         GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection 

# dpkg-reconfigure gcc-4.7-base
dpkg-query: error: --status needs a valid package name but 'gcc-4.7-base' is not: ambiguous package name 'gcc-4.7-base' with more than one installed instance

Use --help for help about querying packages.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: gcc-4.7-base is not installed

# dpkg-reconfigure gcc-4.7-base:amd64
# echo $?
0

It seems that "dpkg-reconfigure -a" somehow needs to take the architecture into account when determining which packages to configure.

Regards,
Peter


-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.8-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages debconf depends on:
ii  perl-base  5.14.2-21

Versions of packages debconf recommends:
ii  apt-utils     0.9.8
pn  debconf-i18n  <none>

Versions of packages debconf suggests:
pn  debconf-doc                <none>
pn  debconf-utils              <none>
ii  dialog                     1.1-20120215-3
pn  libgtk2-perl               <none>
pn  libnet-ldap-perl           <none>
pn  libqtcore4-perl            <none>
pn  libqtgui4-perl             <none>
pn  libterm-readline-gnu-perl  <none>
ii  perl                       5.14.2-21

-- debconf information:
  debconf-apt-progress/preparing:
* debconf/frontend: Dialog
  debconf-apt-progress/title:
* debconf/priority: low
  debconf-apt-progress/info:
  debconf-apt-progress/media-change: