purge kernels with an invalid state

[Doug Smythies]

Due to a stupid, and actually not needed, dependency, Mainline kernels no longer install completely on a 16.04 server. I don't care, because all I wanted was the Ubuntu kernel configuration anyhow, which I am able to get. When one tries to use linux-purge to get rid of it, the program errors out:

doug@s15:~/temp-git-linux-purge/linux-purge$ sudo ./linux-purge -c
[linux-purge] ERROR: The following kernel packages have invalid state; each
package name is followed by its state:
linux-headers-5.4.0-050400rc8-lowlatency install ok unpacked

(Refer to the documentation of dpkg for explanation of the package states.)

Hint: Run this command with --fix option.
Hint: If a package flag is 'reinst-required' (instead of 'ok') for some
package, you may have to reinstall the package by 'apt-get install --reinstall'.

It would be nice to be able to deal with kernels in such a state.

[Jarno Suni (jarnos)]

So did you try the --fix mode?

As a quick workaround I think you could purge linux-headers-5.4.0-050400rc8-lowlatency manually by apt and then use linux-purge to purge the rest associated packages.

I have required linux packages to be completely installed in normal purging mode to keep things simple and clear for the script and user.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

Due to the insane, unnecessary, version dependency on something else, it is not fixable.

And yes, I just purge them manually using dpkg.

Re: Simple and clear: Fair enough.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

Correction: using the --fix option works great. A subsequent run then allows purging of the rest of that kernel.