[Debconf-devel] Bug#779920: Bug#779920: debconf: questions sourced from a template owned by another package block purge/install of other package

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Jul 12, 2015 at 05:00:40PM +0200, Paul Gevers wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Mar 2015 13:38:05 +0100 Paul Gevers <elbrus at debian.org> wrote:
> > I'm guessing that the un-purged package with the registered copy of the
> > template is preventing dbconfig-common from properly setting up its own
> 
> It seems that the problem can be "fixed" by running
> /usr/share/debconf/fix_db.pl, which command I am currently planning to
> add to the purge script of dbconfig-common.
> 
> Do you think this is the appropriate solution?

Whoa, that sounds entirely inappropriate; that's intended as a manual
script for emergency recovery, not to be called from maintainer scripts.
Please don't.

Since dbconfig-common's normal operation apparently involves packages
that use it registering questions based on its templates, why can't it
tolerate questions based on its templates still being registered when
it's installed?  At least from #578960, it looks as though the check
that's failing is something local to dbconfig-common.

I think I would want to see a full DEBCONF_DEBUG=developer log
demonstrating the exact sequence of steps that's going wrong before
trying to recommend a solution, though.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at debian.org]