Probably like the rest of you, I stumbled across this bug when I was looking for a way to remove ntpdate from my system because I'm using ntp, and I don't want the meta package to go away. Here's a workaround.
1. Install the package equivs. This is a simple tool to create trivial Debian packages.
2. Create the configuration file for the ntpdate dummy package:
| $ equivs-control ntpdate-dummy
3. Open ntpdate-dummy in your favorite editor and make these changes:
| Package: ntpdate-dummy
| Version: 9.9
| Provides: ntpdate
| Description: Fake ntpdate; see Launchpad bug 61619
4. Now build the ntpdate dummy package:
| $ equivs-build ntpdate-dummy
Probably like the rest of you, I stumbled across this bug when I was looking for a way to remove ntpdate from my system because I'm using ntp, and I don't want the meta package to go away. Here's a workaround.
1. Install the package equivs. This is a simple tool to create trivial Debian packages.
2. Create the configuration file for the ntpdate dummy package:
| $ equivs-control ntpdate-dummy
3. Open ntpdate-dummy in your favorite editor and make these changes:
| Package: ntpdate-dummy
| Version: 9.9
| Provides: ntpdate
| Description: Fake ntpdate; see Launchpad bug 61619
4. Now build the ntpdate dummy package:
| $ equivs-build ntpdate-dummy
5. Install it: dummy_9. 9_all.deb
| $ sudo dpkg -i ntpdate-
6. Remove ntpdate:
| $ sudo apt-get purge ntpdate
(Inspiration: comment #16 in bug 556372)