failure of gconf2 install, overwriting /usr/share/sgml/gconf/gconf-1.0.dtd

[Seth Hasani]

<quote who="Michael Rasmussen" on Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 07:53:37PM EST>

> Hi,
> 
> I'm in a locked up situation with my upgrade from Hoary to Breezy:
> (Third machine to upgrade, third time is not a charm.)
> 
> The error is:
> 
>   Preparing to replace gconf2 2.10.1-6 (using
>   .../gconf2_2.12.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
>   Unpacking replacement gconf2 ...
>   dpkg: error processing
>   /var/cache/apt/archives/gconf2_2.12.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb (--unpack):
>    trying to overwrite `/usr/share/sgml/gconf/gconf-1.0.dtd', which is
>    also in package gconf2-common
>    dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
>    Errors were encountered while processing:
>     /var/cache/apt/archives/gconf2_2.12.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
> 	E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> 
> How do I correct this situation?  Attempting to remove gconf2-common
> also errors out.

Oh God I hate when that happens! Sometimes on certain dist-upgrades apt
needs a kick. What I did to resolve it was running:
    dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/$badpackage.deb
where $badpackage.deb was whatever package was giving problems. After that,
dist-upgrade usually goes on without a hitch. Use --force-overwrite with
caution though.

Seth