[Monotone-debian] Bug#434604: advice please

[Zack Weinberg]

I've been attempting to fix this bug.  Unfortunately, the purge mode
of the postrm doesn't just use ucf (which is easy to deal with); it
also has unconditional uses of userdel and debconf.  I think that the
appropriate thing for the userdel operation is to check for the
existence of the binary and leave the user alone if not found, just
like ucf.  However, the use of debconf is harder to resolve.  We are
reading one key out of debconf in order to know the name of a file to
delete.  That file *should* be deleted on purge; any other files in
the same directory should *not* be deleted on purge; its name is
unpredictable.  Right now my trial piuparts run is hanging forever in
monotone-server.postrm, I believe because it is trying to talk to a
debconf that has left the building.

Do you have any recommendations on how to fix this?

zw