[plug] Debian Package Upgrade Problems

[Michael Hunt]

Hiya all,

I have been running a Libranet 2.7 (Debain woody based) workstation that
I upgraded to Debian sid some time ago with out any major dramas. On a
regular basis I run an apt-get update followed by an apt-get -u upgrade
to get the latest updates of packages that I am interested in. Sometimes
I also use aptitude to install packages and do the updates.

Recently I have been getting similair errors to the one below where the
postinst script for the package fails to run because of some problem
with tempfile. This first happened with the base-passwd package which I
resolved by manually running the parts of the script that I needed
(namely update-passwd) and commenting out the references to tempfile
which were causing the script to fail. Now the same sort of tempfile
references are happening on other packages (namely mozilla) and without
a browserI can search tyhe debian archives to see if this is a known
problem. 

Can anyone help ????

Michael Hunt

Snipped output from an apt-upgrade appended below.

root at gilgal:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
6 packages not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Setting up tetex-bin (1.0.7+20021025-4) ...
Regenerating /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf ... done
Regenerating /etc/texmf/fmtutil.cnf ... done
/var/lib/dpkg/info/tetex-bin.postinst: line 1: tempfile: command not
found
dpkg: error processing tetex-bin (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 127
Setting up mozilla-browser (1.2-1) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/mozilla-browser.postinst: line 1: tempfile: command
not founddpkg: error processing mozilla-browser (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 127
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mozilla-chatzilla:
mozilla-chatzilla depends on mozilla-browser (= 2:1.2-1); however:
  Package mozilla-browser is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mozilla-chatzilla (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mozilla-mailnews:
mozilla-mailnews depends on mozilla-browser (= 2:1.2-1); however:
  Package mozilla-browser is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mozilla-mailnews (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mozilla-psm:
mozilla-psm depends on mozilla-browser (= 2:1.2-1); however:
  Package mozilla-browser is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mozilla-psm (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mozilla-xmlterm:
mozilla-xmlterm depends on mozilla-browser (= 2:1.2-1); however:
  Package mozilla-browser is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing mozilla-xmlterm (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
tetex-bin
mozilla-browser
mozilla-chatzilla
mozilla-mailnews
mozilla-psm
mozilla-xmlterm
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)