[karmic] The essential package 'mktemp' is marked for removal.

[xteejx]

Binary package hint: update-manager

In Karmic, when trying to use update-manager.

Could not calculate the upgrade

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade:
The essential package 'mktemp' is marked for removal.

 This can be caused by:
 * Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu
 * Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu
 * Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu

This is most likely a transient problem, please try again later.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jun 4 23:29:37 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: update-manager 1:0.120
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.30-5.6-generic
SourcePackage: update-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.30-5-generic x86_64

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: update-manager 1:0.120
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.30-5.6-generic
Uname: Linux 2.6.30-5-generic x86_64
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Martin Beltov (mbeltov)]

I can confirm this on ubuntu 9.10 32-bit

[William LaFrance (wjlafrance)]

This has nothing to do with upgrade-manager, simply a package being flagged as essential.

william@inspiration:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
[clip]
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mktemp
The following packages will be upgraded:
  coreutils
WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
  mktemp

According to http://www.mktemp.org/:
"A different, but compatible, implementation of mktemp is available as part of GNU coreutils."

There you have it. Upgrading coreutils will include the functionality of the old mktemp package.

To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
 ?] Yes, do as I say!

[xteejx (xteejx)]

I'm not too sure that would be a good idea to break coreutils by forcing an update...

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

Reopening update-manager

William LaFrance:
It is related to update-manager, with this suggestion/thought:
Could update-manager be tweaked to ignore the "essential" status of mktemp package for the upgrade?

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

About coreutils:

Conflicts: mktemp
Replaces: mktemp

Perhaps it should have "Provides: mktemp" ?

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

The new coreutils is going to replace mktemp. The fix is uploaded, but it needs to be processed manually.

See https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/coreutils for more information.

It'll be processed soon.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

update-manager and apt really shouldn't ignore "essential".

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

Or mktemp's "Essential: yes" ought to be removed :)

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

> It'll be processed soon.

ok thanks!

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

There's no bug to fix in the mktemp source package; its binary is being taken over by coreutils.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

We've synced in the new coreutils from Debian:

coreutils (7.4-2) unstable; urgency=low

  * move mktemp to /bin instead of /usr/bin (Closes: #531842)
  * include fake non-essential mktemp package (Closes: #531846)

 -- Michael Stone <email address hidden> Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:40:56 -0400

This requires manual recovery on the buildds, though. This is in progress right now (thanks to LaMont Jones for mangling the buildd chroots), and I'll close this bug once it's done.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This is fixed now; I've confirmed with 'apt-get dist-upgrade'.

[xteejx (xteejx)]

Confirmed, works fine with update-manager as well - Thanks guys! :)