Hi once more after some conversation with Jeff Gunter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> from which I've got some new ideas I post some parts of this discussion to the list and add some new aspects of my problem. (The new aspects are the reason why not posting only to Jeff.)
JG>Sounds like dselect is df-ing the /var to figure out if there is file space. JG>That's a bug in my opinion. It should probably also check to see if you JG>have a remote mounted /var/lib or /var/lib/dpkg or /var/lib/dpkg/methods/ or JG> /var/lib/dpkg/methods/ftp etc. I tried to verify this idea by moving the complete /var-tree to the HP-machine. I thought it wouldn't be a good idea because of the low speed of NFS-access, but now I tested this. The result was the same: Approximate total space required: 28526k Available space in debian: 40%k Space required is greater than available space, you will need to select which items to get. But a df says: ... Available ... Mounted on /dev/hda2 5288 / hp.workstation:/<path>/usr 1038027 /usr hp.workstation:/<path>/var 1038027 /var It seems to be enough space to store under /var where the packages are stored while installing. JG> packages are compressed and I *think* they get uncompressed BEFORE JG> installation and so require more file space. JG> JG> What happens if you only install one very small package? Does it put JG> things on the HP ok? Assuming you are installing via ftp ... you could JG> look on the HP and see if the files got put there ok Yes, the packages come in /var/debian/stable/binary-i386/admin. Now I observed a further strange behaviour: I selected only the packages in the beginning of the dselect-list which were preselected as default. Some packages I deselected because I thought I wouldn't need them in the first step. For instance I deselected taper-x.x.deb. BUT taper-x.x.deb EXISTS in this path. I think this isn't a clever behaviour. (I checked my list twice to be sure taper is deselected!) OK, the *.deb-Packages are stored on the workstation which should become the NFS-Server for my Debian box. May be that it is usual when installing only the packages in the admin/ directory were stored. While installing them I ended up with error messages. JG> What are the error messages? Here es the output: Unpacking acct (from .../admin/acct_6.2-2.deb) ... Stopped process accounting. dpkg: error processing debian/stable/binary-i386/admin/acct_6.2-2.deb (--install): package control info contained directory `/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control' dpkg: error while cleaning up: failed to rmdir/unlink `/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci': File exists dpkg: error processing debian/stable/binary-i386/admin/adjtimex_1.2-5.deb (--install): failed to rmdir/unlink `/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci': File exists dpkg: error processing debian/stable/binary-i386/admin/at_2.9b-1.deb (--install): failed to rmdir/unlink `/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci': File exists Errors were encountered while processing: debian/stable/binary-i386/admin/acct_6.2-2.deb (--install): debian/stable/binary-i386/admin/adjtimex_1.2-5.deb (--install): debian/stable/binary-i386/admin/at_2.9b-1.deb (--install): DPKG ERROR I can't imagine any reason for this behaviour. What the hell is the task of the files in tmp.ci? An `ls -l' says: drwxr-xr-x root root tmp.ci But this directory does *not* contain a file `control' in the moment the error messages mentioned above apeared on the screen (may be it is deleted but any rm-call failed but which???). Questions, questions ... JG> This sounds like a good bug, but I wouldn't be surprised if nobody had JG> stumbled across it yet. I also think this but I want to give a description which makes sure that this bug can be reproduced. It me seems so strange that I'm afraid it would be ignored. I want to make sure to give the true reason for this bug. JG> I would check the permissions. Try creating directories and such on the JG> /var/lib filesystem. Yes, I've done this and all worked fine. I had the supposition that dselect uses some quite different rights from root but this makes no sense at all. This supposition is provided by the following fact. Former I mounted only /var/lib on the HP-server. Now I tar-ed the complete /var-tree, mounted /var on the HP-server and un-tar-ed it. I've got some mysterious error messages from tar when unpacking the *.deb files: tar: cannot chown file var/debian/stable/binary-i386/<abc>.deb to uid 47653 gid 64696 tar: cannot chown file var/debian/stable/binary-i386/<xyz>.deb to uid 2282 gid 64976 The "possibility" of the second uid/gid combination was much higher (1:5) but it seems to be randomly if a *.deb package failed to chown to one or the other user. What about this uid/gid numbers. May be the root of my problem is here. Any more ideas to fix this bug out there? Without any clue Andreas.