Comment 6 for bug 7226

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 20:22:14 +0200
From: Shot <email address hidden>
To: Steve Langasek <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#262148: php4: fails post-installation; returned error exit status 20

Hello.

Steve Langasek:

> You'll have to provide more information about your system; there
> doesn't seem to be a problem in general with installing this package.

Well, I don't know what exactly would be a useful information -
it's a freshly installed[1] sarge upgraded to sid. Can you test
a fresh install on an i386 (as opposed to alpha) machine?

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=261899

> In particular, this section of your log looks very suspicious:
>
> > Setting up php4 (4.3.8-3) ...
> > /
> > /
> > dpkg: error processing php4 (--configure):
> > subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 20
> > Errors were encountered while processing:
> > php4
> > E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> > Ack! Something bad happened while installing packages. Trying to recover:
> > Setting up php4 (4.3.8-3) ...
> > /home/shot
> > /home/shot
> > dpkg: error processing php4 (--configure):
>
> There is no reason why the php4 postinst script would be outputting
> directory names on its own. Something else seems to be broken on your
> system.

The strange thing is, when I wanted to purge
php4 and try again, I couldn't; all I got was

(Reading database ... 69140 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing php4 ...
/
/
dpkg: error processing php4 (--purge):
 subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 20
Errors were encountered while processing:
 php4
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Ack! Something bad happened while installing packages. Trying to recover:

When I tried to `dpkg -i`-downgrade 4.3.8-3 to 4.3.3-2 I got exit status
128, but the system somehow thought it's got php4 4.3.3-2 anyway; when
I told aptitude to upgrade this back to 4.3.8-3 it worked flawlessly.

Pozdrav
-- Shot (Piotr Szotkowski)
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| Java programmers are so in love with abstraction, they forget to code.
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