[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#545261: sysv-rc upgrade fails (package X removed by not purged)

[Amos Jeffries]

Am also hitting this issue....  with a workaround for some.

In my case the system is quite old with crud leftover from ancient 
packages (hotplug etc) which were automatically installed and 
automatically removed but never manually purged.
(Attempts were made to manually purge during the Etch/Lenny upgrade 
years ago but dpkg was unable then to purge already removed packages.)

Thus we have init.d scripts and other files wasting space on the system 
and now causing issues. sysv-rc upgrader says "package X removed by not 
purged, " for each and every one.

The quick solution would be for sysv-rc during the upgrade checks to 
question the need for each package and if permitted run a purge for them.

Workaround:
   read the error dialog boxes and manually handle every issue mentioned 
one by one. Probably with "dpkg --purge remove X"  which I see now works 
without the package being installed. Very many kudos to whomever fixed 
that one :).


AYJ