Hi -
I use Debian specifically because it upgrades cleanly from antiquity.
I've never reinstalled Debian from scratch except when buying all-new
hardware, and usually not even then. I had a computer from Debian
0.93rc6 to woody, and several others from woody to present day.
So this problem affects several of my computers. :)
First, thanks for dpkg --clear-avail!
The characterization is not quite complete. I get warnings on packages
which are installed, as well as ones which are removed:
dpkg-query: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 36776
package 'libdb2':
missing architecture
>From status:
Package: libdb2
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: base
...
Another note..."aptitude purge ~c" nearly destroyed my system. I think a
long-removed package referenced a /etc/init.d file that had since been
replaced by a currently-installed package. It was a very important
package (mysql-server on my web host). But I got lucky and re-installing
the current package completely resolved it. Just a caveat for other
people with cobbled systems.
However, it is only a warning, so I don't mind ignoring it so long as
apt/dpkg continue to ignore it.
So the moral of the story is that if you have this problem, dpkg
--clear-avail is a winner. But "aptitude purge ~c" will not necessarily
fix the problem and may have a side-effect of breaking your system.
I'm just cut-and-pasting "Architecture: i386" all over
/var/lib/dpkg/status and having some success. :)
Thanks!
- Greg
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