Hello,
I've had this problem for awhile, and it hasn't seemed to interfere until now, I'm trying to "apt-get install shorewall" and this is what I get:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
dash iproute libatm1 shorewall-common shorewall-shell
Suggested packages:
iproute-doc shorewall-doc
The following packages will be REMOVED:
sun-java5-bin
The following NEW packages will be installed:
dash iproute libatm1 shorewall shorewall-common shorewall-shell
0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 1 to remove and 1092 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/837kB of archives.
After unpacking 64.1MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 123347 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing sun-java5-bin ...
/usr/share/icons/sun-java5.png is not a directory
dpkg: error processing sun-java5-bin (--remove):
subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
sun-java5-bin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)



sun-java5-bin pops up whenever I do anything with apt-get, and "apt-get remove --purge sun-java5-bin" doesn't do anything, this is what it gives:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
sun-java5-bin
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 1092 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 66.9MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 123347 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing sun-java5-bin ...
/usr/share/icons/sun-java5.png is not a directory
dpkg: error processing sun-java5-bin (--remove):
subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
sun-java5-bin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


Is there an easy way to purge this from apt-get??

Thanks

First you can try this (as root):

'dpkg -P sun-java5-bin'

if no joy this should help:

http://www.debianhelp.org/node/7498#comment-26107

aptitude install -f

It looks like there are some bugs in the remove script. Try "rm /usr/share/icons/sun-java5.png" then run "apt-get remove sun-java5-bin"

If the remove script fails when that file is removed, then you might try creating a directory (since the script is apparently expecting a directory):

mkdir -p /usr/share/icons/sun-java5.png

klearview,
'dpkg -P sun-java5-bin' didn't work, but the instructions on the link you gave did. Thanks!
Thanks to the others for their suggestions as well.