How do I unflag a package for removal in Debian?

[Mark Hobley]

I am using the dselect package management tool. dselect is reporting packages
for removal as follows:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
base-files bash cdrecord gnupg hotplug logrotate mailx makedev rxvt screen
telnetd tinyproxy

How can modify the package database, untagging those files for removal?

I would like to see the status for each of these files, is there a command
line tool for this? For example, showing installed and available version,
dependencies, unmet dependencies, pins, architecture, whether or not a
request has been made to install, de-install, hold, and any other information,
etc. For example, is there an apt-status tool:

# apt-status bash

Is there a command line tool to modify any of these fields in the package
database, for example, to untag the removal request for bash:

# apt-fix --keepinstalled bash

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

Mark.
--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Telephone: [phone]
International: 0044 121 247 1596

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/

[Mark Hobley]

Post by Mark Hobley
I would like to see the status for each of these files, is there a command
line tool for this?

Ok, I fould that dpkg reports this:

dpkg -s bash

This reveals:

Package: bash
Essential: yes
Status: deinstall ok installed
Priority: required
Section: shells
Installed-Size: 1228
Maintainer: Matthias Klose <***@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Source: bash (2.05b-2-26)
Version: 2.05b-26
Replaces: bash-doc (<= 2.05-1), bash-completion
Depends: base-files (>= 2.1.12), passwd (>= 1:4.0.3-10)
Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4), libncurses5 (>= 5.4-1)
Suggests: bash-doc
Conflicts: bash-completion
Conffiles:
<snip>
Description:
<snip>

So that is a pretty cool tool.

The status line is not correct for this package though. I require it to read:

Status: install ok installed

Post by Mark Hobley
Is there a command line tool to modify any of these fields in the package
database?

The status information appears to be in /var/lib/dpkg/status

I could edit this file directly, but I would prefer a command line tool to do
this.

Regards,

Mark.
--
Mark Hobley
393 Quinton Road West
QUINTON
Birmingham
B32 1QE

Telephone: [phone]
International: 0044 121 247 1596

Email: markhobley at hotpop dot donottypethisbit com

http://markhobley.yi.org/