On Sun 27 Sep 2020 at 11:01:42 -0400, Stephen P. Molnar wrote: > I followed your suggestion, extracted the deb and copied the files to > /opt/brother/scanner. However, sudo apt purge brscan4 I got: > > comp@AbNormal:~/Downloads/Brother/tmp$ sudo apt purge brscan4 > [sudo] password for comp: > Reading package lists... Done > Building dependency tree > Reading state information... Done > E: The package brscan4 needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive > for it.
Let's assume /opt/brother/scanner is a typo and have a glance at dpkg(1). reinstreq A package marked reinstreq is broken and requires reinstallation. These packages cannot be removed, unless forced with option --force-remove-reinstreq. And later in the manual: remove-reinstreq: Remove a package, even if it's broken and marked to require reinstallation. This may, for example, cause parts of the package to remain on the system, which will then be forgotten by dpkg. We could try removing the reinstall request status from the package with sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq brscan4 and then have a go at sudo dpkg -P brscan4 -- Brian.