[Bug 884979] [NEW] purging a package for different architecture may delete files needed for the actual architecture

[Párkányi, Balázs]

Public bug reported:

After installing adobe-flashplugin on my 64-bit system (11.10) I removed all the packages for i386 architecture. Then I purged them. After restarting the machine, the default Ubuntu session stopped working. I found that when I purged package libglib2.0-0:i386, dpkg deleted the file /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/gschemas.compiled. However it also belongs to  libglib2.0-0. I supposed that the library missed this file, because after copying it back, my box started to work again.
I do not know, if it is a serious problem, but dpkg should handle these cases, when there are packages installed for different architectures. May hard linking the same files prevent  unwanted deletion?

** Affects: dpkg (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/884979

Title:
  purging a package for different architecture may delete files needed
  for the actual architecture

Status in “dpkg” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  After installing adobe-flashplugin on my 64-bit system (11.10) I removed all the packages for i386 architecture. Then I purged them. After restarting the machine, the default Ubuntu session stopped working. I found that when I purged package libglib2.0-0:i386, dpkg deleted the file /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/gschemas.compiled. However it also belongs to  libglib2.0-0. I supposed that the library missed this file, because after copying it back, my box started to work again.
  I do not know, if it is a serious problem, but dpkg should handle these cases, when there are packages installed for different architectures. May hard linking the same files prevent  unwanted deletion?

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