Responses interspersed.
At 10:38 AM 6/9/2004 -0500, James Miller wrote:
I'm surprised at not having gotten more feedback on the zip disk problem I posted about yesterday: seems like it should be a simple one, at least on the surface. Anyway, I'll continue to wait and think on that one. But now, another problem.
Debian Sid's package management system appears to have some major dependency on exim. I'm not sure why, but I seem to have broken apt-get in trying to rid my system of exim. You see, for sending email, I use SMTP servers, so I could see no reason for having exim on my system.
Local mail delivery. So, for example, crond can send e-mail to the userid of a cron job that fails. Other examples too, but you get the idea.
And yes, exim is part of the Debian base install, allowing ANY .deb package to assume that exim is present ... something fair to characterize as a "major dependency". Messing with the Debian base is asking for trouble ... in general, do it only if you have a compelling reason to change it, not just because you "see no reason" for it being the way it is.
When I installed Debian Sid, it automatically installed exim as well and tried to get me to configure it. I never set it up, but tried to remove it right away. I partially succeeded in removing it, only to get it back again when I installed Mutt (I use Mutt only for checking mail at certain pop servers: I never compose or try to send mail using it).
The mutt package probably depends on the exim package, so apt-get (or dselect or whatever you used to install mutt) reinstalled it. That's the way dependency management is supposed to work.
I installed Webmin today, since I was reading an article on its capabilities that made it sound interesting. While looking through Webmin, I noted the add and remove users and groups features. There, I saw reference to and exim group - Debian-exim - and decided, in my attempt to get this uneeded program off my system, I should delete it.
I cannot follow this part of what you wrote. (Although I routinely install and use Debian Sid, I don't use Webmin.) Is this a group that the webmin install creates? My Sid systems have no such group (in fact, I *think* the capital D departs from Debian install guidelines).
And am I even right in assuming that by "group" you mean an entry in /etc/group ?
I also disabled exim from starting when I boot the system (though I didn't reboot). As a result, when I now try to apt-get something, I get the error message
Any particular "something"? Or do you mean you get this response (presumably the kB numbers vary, but the rest of it) with *any* package you try to install? And you've actually tested several unrelated packages?
Honestly, from what you wrote, I don't even know if "something" here refers to apt-get switches (install/remove/update/upgrade, and a few more) or the name of a package you try to apt-get install. This sort of ambiguity is why I keep saying that real, complete examples are better than paraphrases.
Need to get 0B/2654kB of archives. After unpacking 6500kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y Preconfiguring packages ... dpkg: syntax error: unknown group `Debian-exim' in statusoverride file E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2) and, of course, nothing installs.
This is not an "of course". Often (alas, not always), even if apt-get has a problem with some package, it will install others.
And is "statusoverride" a typo for "statoverride"? (Either your typo or the package's.)
Thus, my question. What do I need to do to fix apt-get? Just recreate the group Debian-exim (not sure what propoerties/permissions this group had)?
If you know what package created this group, you can simply apt-get remove it, then apt-get install it. That should recreate the group properly. But groups -- that is, entries in /etc/group -- don't have "permissions", only names, GIDs, passwords, and user lists (for the details, "group" has a man page) ... so either you are being unclear about what Debian-exim is or I am minunderstanding you.
You might see what gid is associated with the exim executable, if you need a clue to the gid to use when restoring the /etc/group entry.
Assuming I guessed right above about the stat/status typo, you might see if you can correct the override setting with dpkg-statoverride (it has a man page for the details). Or, if this is the only entry in the file (/var/lib/dpkg/statoverride), you might just delete it (the line or the file).
Aside from that ... Sid is Debian unstable after all, and sometimes the installing versions of packages have transient incompatibilities. (I ran into one just yesterday, with console-tools, when doing a routine apt-get dist-upgrade.) So it is worth asking if you've done an apt-get update/upgrade (or dist-upgrade) in connection with this install. And if you've redone the update/upgrade since the problem occurred. (My console-tools problem was fixed this morning, for example.)
Is there a way to get exim - and any other sort of sendmail program - off my system, since I don't use them? Frankly, I think they only add a further layer of complication to a system I'm already stretched to comprehend and administer.
Not a good one. I wouldn't do it myself unless I were modifying the system in a way that involved no longer using the Debian package-management system for updates, ungrades, and installs. Every distro sticks you with some bits of overhead, and this is simply part of Debian's.
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