Upgrade broken: base-files installation fails due to alledgedly unmet usrmerge

[piper]

all you have to do is go to

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/var/lib/dpkg/status

scroll thru to you hit the package base-files, which looks like

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Package: base-files
Essential: yes
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 350
Maintainer: Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Multi-Arch: foreign
Version: 13.5
Replaces: base, dpkg (<= 1.15.0), miscutils
Provides: base, usr-is-merged
Pre-Depends: awk
Breaks: debian-security-support (<< 2019.04.25), initscripts (<< 2.88dsf-13.3), sendfile (<< 2.1b.20080616-5.2~)
Conffiles:
/etc/debian_version 418bf63c34339f803ffaab19df71f611
/etc/dpkg/origins/debian c47b6815f67ad1aeccb0d4529bd0b990
/etc/host.conf 4eb63731c9f5e30903ac4fc07a7fe3d6
/etc/issue 4fa62803f216112e94adefbaafed16ab
/etc/issue.net 06ea14875beb99190dfc548d4ecd24de
/etc/update-motd.d/10-uname 9e1b832b7b06f566156e7c9e0548247b
Description: Debian base system miscellaneous files
This package contains the basic filesystem hierarchy of a Debian system, and
several important miscellaneous files, such as /etc/debian_version,
/etc/host.conf, /etc/issue, /etc/motd, /etc/profile, and others,
and the text of several common licenses in use on Debian systems.

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apt policy base-files

make sure apt policy matches what status says

if they don't match, change it in status, reboot, apt update; apt full-upgrade and no more errors

i don't use debian anymore

[samoht]

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# LANG=C /var/lib/dpkg/status
-bash: /var/lib/dpkg/status: Keine Berechtigung

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# LANG=C ls -al /var/lib/dpkg/status
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3006650  2. Okt  09:44 /var/lib/dpkg/status

?

[dibl]

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~$ cat /var/lib/dpkg/status

Good to see you, @piper!   

[Penyelam]

You can also do

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grep -A 9 "Package: base-files" /var/lib/dpkg/status


[michaa7]

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# LANG=C /var/lib/dpkg/status
-bash: /var/lib/dpkg/status: Keine Berechtigung

What do you expect here? Which programm should do what?

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# LANG=C <cat/more/less/???> /var/lib/dpkg/status

see?

[samoht]

Thank you, @michaa7, for your hint that solved my complete blackout at that moment, sorry.