Removing ubuntu-base?

[Stephen Ryan]

On Sun, 6 Feb 2005 11:53:10 +0200, Rami Kayyali <r.kayyali at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about if I reinstall ubuntu-base before upgrading? This should
> make it all work, right?
> 
> Right now, I'm running Hoary (from Warty), and I removed ubuntu-base,
> so whenever Hoary is released from beta, I'll probably just reinstall
> ubuntu-base, upgrade, then remove everything I don't need, what do you
> think?
> 

There is a better way; the equivs package lets you generate dummy
packages for the sole purpose of satisfying dependencies.  Generate
dummy packages for postfix and dhcp3-client, then you can leave
ubuntu-base installed without needing to reinstall the real
dhcp3-client and postfix packages.



Install equivs; it's available as an Ubuntu package (I did "sudo
apt-get install equivs").

Save the following as postfix-dummy.control:
=====
Section: mail
Package: postfix-dummy
Provides: postfix
Description: dummy package to allow real Postfix package to be removed
=====

Save the following as dhcp3-client-dummy.control
=====
Section: net
Package: dhcp3-client-dummy
Provides: dhcp3-client
Description: dummy package to allow real dhcp3-client package to be removed
=====

Now open a Terminal window and run:
$ equivs-build postfix-dummy.control
$ sudo dpkg -i postfix-dummy_1.0_all.deb
$ equivs-build dhcp3-client-dummy
$ sudo dpkg -i dhcp3-client-dummy_1.0_all.deb

Now you should be able to reinstall ubuntu-base without reinstalling
the actual postfix and dhcp3-client packages.

There are example .control files in /usr/share/doc/equivs/examples/
(after you install it).  The Section: field in each file I copied from
the corresponding Section: field in the packages you wish to remove. 
The Package: name is arbitrary, picked to be unlikely to conflict with
a real package name.  The Provides: line is just the name of the
package(s) you wish to replace, although it is a good idea not to mix
unrelated packages together (should you ever wish to install the real
postfix, it would be very confusing to have dhcp3-client pulled in at
the same time).  The Description: field is just so that you'll
remember what this is next year when you're looking around and can't
remember why you did this.