Error installing texlive-base

[Victor Hugo Muñoz]

Hello, everyone.

I'm having problems installing texlive in my PC. I'm using unstable
here.

Everything started a couple of days ago, when I needed the package
physics.sty. I had to install texlive-science. But dependences came
in, and somehow I got a lot of configuration errors, and installation
was not completed. I uninstalled all texlive related packages I could
see, trying to make a fresh start. I think the problem is with
texlive-base.

I have all its dependencies installed and updated (tex-common,
texlive-binaries, etc.), and I'm attemting to install texlive-base
only. I get this:

---------------------------------------------------------------

Performing actions...
Retrieving bug reports... Done
Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 217166 files and directories currently
installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb ...
dpkg: error processing archive
/var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb
(--unpack):
conffile name 'remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/dvipdfm/config/config' is
not an absolute pathname
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Press Return to continue, 'q' followed by Return to quit.

---------------------------------------------------------------

In case it helps, /etc/texmf only contains texmf.d and web2c

I don't know where to go from here, so any help will be appreciated.

Best regards,

Victor

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 11:57:05AM -0300, Victor Hugo Muñoz wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
>
> I'm having problems installing texlive in my PC. I'm using unstable
> here.
>
> Everything started a couple of days ago, when I needed the package
> physics.sty. I had to install texlive-science. But dependences came
> in, and somehow I got a lot of configuration errors, and installation
> was not completed. I uninstalled all texlive related packages I could
> see, trying to make a fresh start. I think the problem is with
> texlive-base.
>

It might be worth checking what packages you have installed. If you
can manage to, uninstall them (or use dpkg --purge to purge texlive-base
then retry.

Also, as ever, my advice would be to use stable unless there is a
really compelling reason: unstable can change radically and
breakages happen.

All the very best, as ever,

Andy Cater

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-10-14 at 10:57, Victor Hugo Muñoz wrote:

> Hello, everyone.
>
> I'm having problems installing texlive in my PC. I'm using unstable
> here.

That may be the root problem, or at least, the best place to solve it.
The basic rule of running unstable is "if it breaks, you get to keep all
the pieces". IMO, no one should ever run unstable on a computer they
*need* to be functional.

> Everything started a couple of days ago, when I needed the package
> physics.sty. I had to install texlive-science. But dependences came
> in, and somehow I got a lot of configuration errors, and installation
> was not completed. I uninstalled all texlive related packages I could
> see, trying to make a fresh start. I think the problem is with
> texlive-base.
>
> I have all its dependencies installed and updated (tex-common,
> texlive-binaries, etc.), and I'm attemting to install texlive-base
> only. I get this:
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Performing actions...
> Retrieving bug reports... Done
> Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done
> Preconfiguring packages ...
> (Reading database ... 217166 files and directories currently
> installed.)
> Preparing to unpack .../texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb ...
> dpkg: error processing archive
> /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb
> (--unpack):
> conffile name 'remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/dvipdfm/config/config' is
> not an absolute pathname

I'm not an expert on this part of the system, but to my eye, this looks
as if there's an syntactically-invalid entry in the list of conffiles
for that package.

If I'm not mistaken, that list is defined in
'/var/lib/dpkg/info/texlive-base.conffiles'. On my system (running
testing, with version 2020.20210202-3), that file contains two lines,
neither of which starts with 'remove-on-upgrade' nor matches that path.

Not sure what could usefully be done from there, but this may at least
be a starting point.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

[Victor Hugo Muñoz]

El jue, 14 oct 2021 a las 12:46, The Wanderer (<wand...@fastmail.fm>) escribió:
>
> On 2021-10-14 at 10:57, Victor Hugo Muñoz wrote:
>
> > Hello, everyone.
> >
> > I'm having problems installing texlive in my PC. I'm using unstable
> > here.
>
> That may be the root problem, or at least, the best place to solve it.
> The basic rule of running unstable is "if it breaks, you get to keep all
> the pieces". IMO, no one should ever run unstable on a computer they
> *need* to be functional.

Yes, I know the risks :-) My office computer is in stable for that
reason. This is my home computer. Anyway,
I'm extremely conservative with upgrades, and do not upgrade if I
think I'm going to break something important, This may
be the first major issue I've had for years in this particular machine.

> > Preparing to unpack .../texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb ...
> > dpkg: error processing archive
> > /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-base_2021.20210921-1_all.deb
> > (--unpack):
> > conffile name 'remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/dvipdfm/config/config' is
> > not an absolute pathname
>
> I'm not an expert on this part of the system, but to my eye, this looks
> as if there's an syntactically-invalid entry in the list of conffiles
> for that package.
>
> If I'm not mistaken, that list is defined in
> '/var/lib/dpkg/info/texlive-base.conffiles'. On my system (running
> testing, with version 2020.20210202-3), that file contains two lines,
> neither of which starts with 'remove-on-upgrade' nor matches that path.
>

Thanks for the suggestion. The file does not exist in my system. I
checked the contents of the deb file, and nothing. I only found
a mention to dvipdfm in etc/libpaper.d/texlive-base

Tried to find if it may be installed by some other package, but
searching contents of packages in the debian web site, I found no
match.

Victor

[David Wright]

I'm still running buster, but what that /looks/ like to me is that
you're running a version of dpkg that is, as yet, ignorant of the
?new flags in packages' lists of conffiles.

I say flags, but the only one defined is exactly the one you've
observed: remove-on-upgrade. So I'm guessing that a naïve dpkg
would think that is supposed to process "remove-on-upgrade" as
a conffile name, and complains.

Cheers,
David.

[Victor Hugo Muñoz]

El jue, 14 oct 2021 a las 13:35, Andrew M.A. Cater
(<amac...@einval.com>) escribió:

>>
> It might be worth checking what packages you have installed. If you
> can manage to, uninstall them (or use dpkg --purge to purge texlive-base
> then retry.

Thanks for the idea. It didn't work. texlive-base is not installed, so
purge di nothing. I rechecked the packages installed. Some tex-related
packages still had configuration files, so i purged them all. Then I
started again, installing tex-common, texlive-binaries, and then
texlive-base. And here it fails again as above.

>
> Also, as ever, my advice would be to use stable unless there is a
> really compelling reason: unstable can change radically and
> breakages happen.

Yes, I tend to be careful before upgrades and have managed to have no
major issues for years. This is my home PC anyway, so I have more
freedom for failure.
But, well, latex is fairly critical for me :-)

Victor

[Victor Hugo Muñoz]

El jue, 14 oct 2021 a las 13:46, David Wright
(<deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk>) escribió:

>
> I'm still running buster, but what that /looks/ like to me is that
> you're running a version of dpkg that is, as yet, ignorant of the
> ?new flags in packages' lists of conffiles.
>
> I say flags, but the only one defined is exactly the one you've
> observed: remove-on-upgrade. So I'm guessing that a naïve dpkg
> would think that is supposed to process "remove-on-upgrade" as
> a conffile name, and complains.
>

And it looks that this worked! You were right, I had not the latest
version, so I upgraded dpkg, and yes, texlive-base passed the
installation without errors. I have yet to reinstall the rest of the
latex subsystem, but I guess I'm on my way now.

Thanks a lot!

Victor

[David Wright]

The reply confirms that testing has an older version. Here's the
conffiles for the version you are trying to install. (Obviously
you don't have the file in your /var/lib/dpkg/info/texlive-base.list
because you haven't yet succeeded in installing it.)

DEBIAN/conffiles 329/329 100%
remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/dvipdfm/config/config
remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/xdvi/xdvi.cfg
remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/fmt.d/10texlive-base.cnf
remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/fmt.d/10texlive-base.cnf
remove-on-upgrade /etc/texmf/fmt.d/10texlive-math-extra.cnf
/etc/libpaper.d/texlive-base
/etc/texmf/texdoctk/texdocrc.defaults

So, as I guessed, your dpkg is effectively obsolescent for
installing some packages in unstable.

Cheers,
David.

[harry...@tutanota.com]

15 Oct 2021, 02:41 by victor...@uchile.cl:

I'm running unstable with an intact tex-live install, so a dpkg misconfiguration definitely looks like the issue.
Any `remove on upgrade' would be rare and more probably issued by the incoming upgrade package, not a standard config in dpkg.
Cheers!

Harry.

[Greg Wooledge]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 01:51:07PM -0300, Victor Hugo Muñoz wrote:
> And it looks that this worked! You were right, I had not the latest
> version, so I upgraded dpkg, and yes, texlive-base passed the
> installation without errors.

Is this considered a bug in texlive-base, i.e. that it should contain a
Pre-Depends: on a specific version of dpkg? Or is it the case that *all*
of the packages in bookworm are going to have this issue, and so they're
not going to bother with a Pre-Depends: in every single package, but
instead will handle the dist-upgrade in some other way?

[Andrei POPESCU]

Packages are not allowed to use dpkg features that are not present in
stable.

In this particular case, according to the changelog 'dpkg' introduced
that feature in 1.20.6, while stable already has 1.20.9.

Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 14 oct 21, 13:19:09, Victor Hugo Muñoz wrote:
>
> Yes, I know the risks :-) My office computer is in stable for that
> reason. This is my home computer. Anyway,
> I'm extremely conservative with upgrades, and do not upgrade if I
> think I'm going to break something important, This may
> be the first major issue I've had for years in this particular machine.

Postponing upgrades (of some packages) for a while (days or weeks, at
most) is indeed a necessity from time to time in unstable.

However, at some point you do have to deal with it somehow[1] and let
the system reach current unstable, otherwise you'll encounter a
situation that is not supported at all (like managing packages from
current unstable with a 'dpkg' from pre-stable).

[1] this may involve removing a specific package that is causing the log
jam.

[Greg Wooledge]

Huh, interesting. So the OP's problem arose because they're running
post-bullseye unstable or testing, with pre-bullseye dpkg? Gah. Why
do people do things like this to themselves....

[Victor Hugo Muñoz]

Actually, yes. Why? Due to confinement, my home PC has also been my
office PC. And
since I had a working machine, decided to upgrade packages only if
strictly necessary.
Although I have installed reportbug to watch out for reported issues,
upgrades in unstable
can break important things and that cost has not been acceptable for
me for a long time.

Victor

[Cindy Sue Causey]

I used to postpone because I didn't understand how the system works.
My count at one time was over 1,000 packages on hold.

What it seems to be most often is that there will be a package version
number change. That logjam.. very often is that a User's choice of
e.g. apt, apt-get, or aptitude needs to bring a brand new package
onboard. Occasionally, it's even about bringing on more new packages
beyond that version change. It's all about progress and package
feature changes.

My a-sumption about it is that they're graciously allowing Users the
opportunity to consciously approve a new package coming into one's
system. That new package addition even more frequently then requires
one to manually delete the prior version of the newly added package.

What I experienced and FREAKED OUT about (here on Debian-User) a
couple years back was that a massive stable package deletion can occur
if one suddenly decides to simultaneously upgrade ALL of those 1,000+
packages one might have postponed. If you nibble at it instead, that
massive deletion usually does not occur. In fact, that logjam starts
opening up and throwing packages into a normal upgrade priority after
just the right postponed package is upgraded by adding in its newest
dependency.

Something like that... there.

N.B. Linux-image on hold is a slightly different beast. Part of that
is that its upgrade can render some systems unbootable until things
are manually updated within one's CHOICE of boot managers. For
example, I use LILO and have a separate directory that I maintain to
help it function. I have to manipulate the latest vmlinuz and
initrd.img files within that dedicated folder then everything
continues to boot successfully after that. Thank you, Developers!

Cindy :)
--
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA
* runs with birdseed *

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 15 oct 21, 10:39:54, Victor Hugo Muñoz wrote:
>
> Actually, yes. Why? Due to confinement, my home PC has also been my
> office PC. And
> since I had a working machine, decided to upgrade packages only if
> strictly necessary.

As you found out (the hard way), the "strictly necessary" isn't always
obvious.

> Although I have installed reportbug to watch out for reported issues,
> upgrades in unstable
> can break important things and that cost has not been acceptable for
> me for a long time.

Switch to stable then ;)

You were already using packages older than latest stable, so what is the
benefit of running (something that appeared to be) unstable?

[Victor Hugo Muñoz]

El lun, 18 oct 2021 a las 9:07, Andrei POPESCU
(<andreim...@gmail.com>) escribió:

Living? :-)

I mean, I guess we all have our pressures, work/family/etc., so in the
end it's a balance between
things, and the perceived time one has to fix things if they break.
>From the very beginning, when I started using Debian (back in potato
times)
I have run stable at work, and unstable at home, with periodic
updates. To try new features in advance, to try new software in
advance,
whatever. And eventually, less time to play, and a variable risk
disposition. Life is always complex, and computers are a part of it.

Victor