Debian Bug report logs - #625241
dpkg: Incomplete cleanup of empty directories

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Ondřej Surý <ondrej@debian.org>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: dpkg: stale directories when packages install conffiles to subsubdirectories of /etc

Date: Mon, 02 May 2011 19:58:37 +0200

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.15.8.10
Severity: minor

Hi,

I don't know whether it is real dpkg bug or not, but that's something
I have found in php5 piuparts testing.

Both php5-common and php5-cli (and other SAPIs) "owns" /etc/php5
(/var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list), now after

dpkg --remove php5-cli
dpkg --remove php5-common
dpkg --purge php5-common
dpkg --purge php5-cli

the /etc/php5 is left in place because it was removed from
/var/lib/dpkg/info/php5-cli.list (I guess on basis that another
package - the php5-common still "owns" the directory).

The php5-cli.list files looks like (after dpkg --remove php5-cli):

# cat php5-cli.list  
/etc/php5/cli

I guess this is something not a php5 specific and could happen in more
packages which put more config files into subsubdirectories in /etc/.

I think the correct behaviour of dpkg should be to leave all
directories leading to all left conffiles after removing but not
purging, so after issuing:

dpkg --remove php5-cli

the php5-cli.list file should contain 

# cat php5-cli.list
/.  
/etc
/etc/php5
/etc/php5/cli

instead of

/etc/php5/cli

I have tested that and edited the php5-cli.list to include all
directories up-to-the-root and it works as it should.

In other words I don't think there's a piuparts bug in src:php5
(however I am probably willing to create workaround and just do
"rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /etc/php5" in postrm script purge
target for all php5 SAPIs).

I have checked stable and unstable distributions and both have same
behaviour.

O.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  coreutils               8.5-1            GNU core utilities
ii  libbz2-1.0              1.0.5-6          high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  libc6                   2.11.2-10        Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libselinux1             2.0.96-1         SELinux runtime shared libraries
ii  xz-utils                5.0.0-2          XZ-format compression utilities
ii  zlib1g                  1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library - runtime

dpkg recommends no packages.

Versions of packages dpkg suggests:
ii  apt                           0.8.10.3   Advanced front-end for dpkg

-- no debconf information

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