How to recover from a faulty package

[dcroxton]

I ended up with my apt database corrupted (it's a long story), so when I run the update-manager, I get the following error:

E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

But when I run the command, it configures a lot of packages but always gets stuck at the sun report builder for openoffice.org. Is there any way I can remove this package so that I can proceed reconfiguring the rest of my system?

Sincerely,
Derek
A curious little blog (http://acuriouslittleblog.blogspot.com)

[raymondh]

Hello Derek,

Do you remember what you were installing?

If so, you could sudo apt-get remove 'packagename' and the re-install.

Another way is to check synaptic (system >admin) and check for broken packages, etc (look at filters tab).

Good luck.

[dcroxton]

I do know what package is causing it to hang: the sun report-builder extension for OpenOffice.org. Unfortunately, trying to remove it via apt-get remove causes the same lock-up that I get in the upgrade process. (It really is a weird one, too: I can't even kill the process with kill -9, and eventually the computer becomes completely unresponsive.)

So, I need some manual way to get the package out of the database.

Sincerely,
Derek Croxton