Yesterday I encountered a new package manager problem that I have never seen before. Basically I started with a .rpm package and wanted to create a .deb package with alien. The program was vmware-server. Long story short it failed and I ended up just downloading the tar ball and installing it that way and compiling some things. That worked. When I tried to then do something with apt-get it errored telling me that there was some package that needed to be reinstalled which was vmware-server. Since I had already deleted it from the server it could no longer be found. Here is a list of things I tried before using the technique I’m about to show you.

apt-get remove apt-get remove -purge dpkg --force-all -purge dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq First I would try those if you are having problems with a package. Now if it’s really hosed and you can’t get any of those option to work listed above then I do have a solution for you, which did take a me a bit to find.

Edit /var/lib/dpkg/status with your favorite editor. Now find the package that is giving you trouble. Mine started with the line

Package: vmware-server

After I found that there are two options. Delete that whole section, which I ended up doing. Or change the status to:

Status: install ok installed

Either one should get you back working. Just save the file and try using the package manager again, and you should be all set.