On Sun, Mar 26, 2000 at 09:39:09PM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote: > On Sun, Mar 26, 2000 at 11:03:27AM -0000, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote: > > The base package doesn't exist any more for quite a long time, those first > > time Debian user are most of them quite good and knows what to do to > > correct this problem. Furthermore for those who can't, they simply have > > to not remove the base package (which is guaranteed by its essential > > flag)... this bug deserves no more to be open. > > I think we are closing bugs for the sake of it here. Any reason > why the suggestion can't be implemented? (ie make base-files.postinst > truncate base.list). OK it's not a very nice solution but there isn't > a better one. I personally have nuked the base package and lost all > my devices this way.
Sorry to step in, but there might be a better solution to the problem. I think you can preserve files of an old package which otherwise wold be removed. The possible solution I see to this case is using dpkg-divert. If base is still installed you should dpkg-divert every file in /dev that used to be in that package to some other place. Example: dpkg-divert --package base-files --divert-to /dev.base/hda /dev/hda Then if you remove base, the devices would not get removed. There however might be many files to divert and I don't know if somebody really wants to do this. And as already mentioned this package is quite old so only few people would using it. I won't reopen this bug but I forward this information to the BTS. Just my 2 cent. Ingo -- Windows, me?