remove exim install sendmail
 

Hi, I have a debian 3.0 linux box. Exim is my default MTA. I would like to switch over to sendmail. When I run the command:

apt-get install sendmail

I this error message:

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
exim
The following NEW packages will be installed:
sendmail
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/918kB of archives. After unpacking 1778kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
dpkg: exim: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you request:
mutt depends on exim | mail-transport-agent; however:
Package exim is to be removed.
Package mail-transport-agent is not installed.
Package exim which provides mail-transport-agent is to be removed.
mutt depends on exim | mail-transport-agent; however:
Package exim is to be removed.
Package mail-transport-agent is not installed.
Package exim which provides mail-transport-agent is to be removed.
mailx depends on mail-transport-agent; however:
Package mail-transport-agent is not installed.
Package exim which provides mail-transport-agent is to be removed.
(Reading database ... 16596 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing exim ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/exim.prerm: /etc/init.d/exim: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing exim (--remove):
subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
/var/lib/dpkg/info/exim.postinst: /etc/init.d/exim: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
exim
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


I have look into dselect a bit but WOW! that is kind of heavy.

Is there a simple way to remove exim and install sendmail?

Bill

Why do you want to install sendmail at all? Sendmail has a pretty bad security history and I suggest you stay away from it.

You should give postfix a try!

I get the same error when I try to install postfix, smail, qmail ect.....

Wow that was bad!!
 

Sorry I cannot explain really how this problem was fixed. I hired a friend to do it and all was good after that.:)

All I can say is what i did. I removed exim with dpkg --purge --force- exim

Danger!! This removed exim but it also removed my dpkg, samba, apache and a few more; which from that point I was beat.

My friend went to apt-get.org and read up on how to install dpkg and an hour later all was good again.

okay. i hope you do not have installed sendmail :-)