debian not playing nice

[John H. Robinson, IV]

George Georgalis wrote:
> I'm getting familiar with apt-get, it's been pretty easy.
> 
> But on this particular box, I can't install apache! it's pretty generic
> but the module lines never seem to make it into httpd.conf so it doesn't
> work. I've removed / purged every package with apache in it, a few
> times.
> 
> below is the error I now have with the install. the box has almost
> nothing on it. I just installed apache-common with no error. Best I can
> tell, THIS package should provide the missing file!
> 
> 
> # apt-get install apache
> Reading Package Lists... Done
> Building Dependency Tree... Done
> Sorry, apache is already the newest version.
> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 11  not upgraded.
> 1 packages not fully installed or removed.
> Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
> Setting up apache (1.3.26-0woody3) ...
> update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/apache: file does not exist
> dpkg: error processing apache (--configure):
>  subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  apache
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

/etc/init.d/apache is a conffile, so it gets treated differently from
other ``regular'' files (ie: if you edit it, those edits will be
respected.  deletion is considered an edit)

i'm betting when you removed it, you did not --purge it. (removing w/o
purging leaves all the conf files around, so if you re-install it, it
keeps the same config that you had before.  nice, no?)

you can manually extract the file and mv it into place: (if you do this
from the root directory, no need to mv it into place)

dpkg-deb --fsys-tarfile /var/cache/apt/archives/apache_1.3.26-0woody3_i386.deb | tar x ./etc/init.d/apache
dpkg --configure --pending

you can also use dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/apache_1.3.26-0woody3_i386.deb
and it should ask about the conffile, and offer to install the packaged
version. ``apt-get --reinstall apache'' should act similarly to the
``dpkg -i'' invocation.

enjoy!

-john