[SOLVED] APT always installing the same package

[SirArthur]

Hi,

I'm experiencing a strange behavior from apt on my Debian 4 etch installation.

Sometime ago I installed XMailServer on it, and so far so good, it is working quite fine and no issue at all here. However since this installation apt got crazy and now each time I install something else it goes and installs xmail again. This creates the issue that everytime I add or remove a package xmail gets unconfigured and I've to delete spool and recreate the domains.

Sort of:

apt-get install somePackage
....regular messages if something else is needed to be downloaded...
then installs xmailserver again for no reason at all giving a whole load of "file already exists" errors while rewrite xmail's config.

Already tried apt-get clean, apt-get autoclean, purge/remove -> reinstall sequence, delete the .deb package from apt's cache. But still no luck, apt insists into reinstall it everytime I want to install anything else.

Any place I can edit to make apt stop doing this?

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Try to clean everything.

su -
apt-get clean all

Post the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list and /etc/debian_release files here.

[SirArthur]

Hi, ty

Here're the contents of my sources.list:

deb h**p://debian.ua.pt/debian/ etch main
deb-src h**p://debian.ua.pt/debian/ etch main

deb h**p://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
deb-src h**p://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

/etc/debian_release wasn't found. If you meant debian_version it contains only 4.0

Gave the clean all command and run the following after (I don't normally use vim, so it goes ok for the test):

apt-get -y install vim

Result:

serverlnx:~# apt-get -y install vim > apt_result.txt
ln: criando link simbólico `/var/lib/xmail/aliasdomain.tab' to `/etc/xmail/aliasdomain.tab': Arquivo existe
ln: criando link simbólico `/var/lib/xmail/aliases.tab' to `/etc/xmail/aliases.tab': Arquivo existe
...

ln: criando link simbólico `/var/lib/xmail/aliasdomain.tab' to `/etc/xmail/aliasdomain.tab': Arquivo existe = ln creating symbolic link 'path' to 'path': File exists

As result my xmail got desconfigured again

[SirArthur]

SOLVED:

Just figured it out. I was after apt but the error was on dpkg.

Just edited /var/lib/dpkg/status with nano

And changed:

Package: xmail
Status: install ok half-configured
Priority: extra
Section: mail

to:

Package: xmail
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: mail

Thanks for your time and attention.