Ross Boylan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My system got in a broken state in which it could not mount some > disks. I had patched the evms libraries to correct a problem, and > then overwrote them with an updated Debian package (which > unfortunately lacked the patch). > > I wanted to dpkg -i my_old.deb (that will work, even for a downgrade, > won't it?), but dpkg said > dpkg: unable to access dpkg status area: No such file or directory > > The status area was on one of the evms disks. > > I used dpkg-deb to unpack the .deb file and copied the single file I > needed over the newer one. Is there a better way to do this?
From the dpkg-deb manpage:
--fsys-tarfile
Extracts the filesystem tree data from a binary
package and sends it to standard output in tar format.
Together with tar this can be used to extract a particular
file from a package archive.
However, I think what you're really looking for is apt-src or apt-build.
> Is there any way to run dpkg -i when the directory it needs is gone?
No, it's really quite important to dpkg's operation. Until you restore
your /var/lib/dpkg directory from the disk (hopefully you can), Debian's
packaging system will unusable.
--
Poems... always a sign of pretentious inner turmoil.
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