package postgis can't be purged if postgresql is not installed due to missing directory

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

Confirmed in lucid.

~# apt-cache policy postgis
postgis:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.3.6-2
  Version table:
     1.3.6-2 0

Patch proposal for lucid

SRU for Karmic

Hi,

and thanks for you work!

Wouldn't be easier to just rename postgis.postrm to postgresql-8.3-postgis.postrm as the link to be removed is installed by postgresql-8.3-postgis.postinst ? It seems that postgis.postrm is just here to remove the link, so it would do the trick.

I'm putting this bug report as Incomplete in the meantime. Please put back as Confirmed when answering to my question.

Thanks,

Fabrice

Hi Fabrice,

I try to stay as close as possible of the main maintainer's work when submitting an SRU, but your suggestion is the real fix indeed.
I've suggested it to the Debian maintainer and I'm waiting for his reply.

JB

It might be worth syncing 1.4.0-2 from Debian, it seems to be fixed there: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=560409

Fabrice, here is the answer from Debian maintainer regarding the removal of the link in postgis.postrm

"[...] That link is there to allow an upgrade path from one postgis
version to another (with the same postgresql version), the purge should be done only
if one is interested in cleaning all postgis versions to do not use postgis anymore,
it should not be removed when a specific postgis edition is purged (which could happen
if admin would be too hasty in doing its homework). I think this way of doing the
thing is a bit more safe, indeed."

However, now that it's fixed upstream we can sync from Debian (note that latest postgis doesn't build on armel and mips) and I backported the fix to Karmic.

SRU : Updated patch for karmic

Backport from upstream to lucid.

I synced sid into lucid, since sid's version also drops support for the obsolete 8.3.

I sponsored the karmic-proposed update.

Accepted postgis into karmic-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

The package failed to build:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  jikes-classpath: Depends: jikes but it is not installable

so this cannot currently be tested.

jikes has been deleted from the archive since karmic.
Replace build-depends from jikes-classpath to default-jdk in debian/control file and from jikes-classpath to javac in debian/rules.
The package builds fine on a clean i386 chroot. ?field.comment=jikes has been deleted from the archive since karmic.

Finally, patch against -proposed version as recommended on irc.

Thanks.

FTBFS fix accepted, thanks!

So this is ready for testing in about two hours.

Verification done in karmic. Test log attached.
A minor cosmetic effects still remains.

This bug was fixed in the package postgis - 1.3.5-1ubuntu2

---------------
postgis (1.3.5-1ubuntu2) karmic-proposed; urgency=low

  * Fixed libpostgis-java package FTBFS.

postgis (1.3.5-1ubuntu1) karmic-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/postgis-generic.postrm.in : backport fix from 1.4.0-2 to not stop
    on error in postrm if the target dir does not exist. (LP: #392143)
 -- Jean-Baptiste Lallement <email address hidden> Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:01:23 +0100