Bug#338363: tetex-base: dpkg unable to delete old files

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org> wrote:

>>> dpkg: warning - unable to delete old file `/var/lib/texmf/dvips':
>>> Directory not empty
>
> f> Where's the bug?  Why should we delete generated files during an upgrade?
>
> Well it looks bad to the user. Of all the hundreds of packages
> upgrading, only yours produces those messages. 

I cannot believe that - at least all packages that ship a subdirectory
in /var/log and put their logfiles there will give similar messages,
because the logfiles must be preserved upon removal (and only be removed
upon purge).  The same is proably true for most packages that create
subdirectories in /var/cache - or is anybody aware of an alternative
solution? 

> And I bet one would see
> them on package removal too!?

If you remove, not purge, yes.  The message is simply true, and might be
interesting information to a local admin.

>>> dpkg: warning - unable to delete old file `/etc/texmf/etex':
>>> Directory not empty
>
> f> Can you tell us what is in this directory?
>
> hmm, that directory is now gone, as is /var/lib/texmf/dvips. Maybe at
> the end of the upgrade it did get removed.

Yes, that is done in our postinst, but only after checking that no file
in there has changed.  But I wonder why dpkg gives a warning about
directories in /etc in the removal phase, anyway.

> Hmmm all I can find is
> /etc/texmf/pdftex/pdftex.cfg..postinst-bak. So the others got cleaned
> up... but still: bad to scare users with those messages.

This shows that there's a typo somewhere (it should only have one dot),
and maybe that's the reason why it hasn't been moved out of the way;
I'll investigate this. 

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer