I had a go at changing the manpage for acpi-support to cat.1, and it seems like there are safeguards to prevent that, so this is probably only a problem for packages that have the same source package. I guess it is assumed that whoever makes the source packages should really know better:
# dpkg -i acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb (Reading database ... 261993 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace acpi-support 0.137-3 (using acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement acpi-support ... dpkg: error processing acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb (--install): trying to overwrite '/usr/share/man/man1/cat.1.gz', which is also in package coreutils 8.5-1 Processing triggers for man-db ... Errors were encountered while processing: acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb And curiously, also only a problem when installing the packages as a unit. When installing an unmodified acpi-support alone (after it had already been installed), dpkg complains about trying to overwrite files from another package: # dpkg -i acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb (Reading database ... 261993 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace acpi-support 0.137-3 (using acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement acpi-support ... dpkg: error processing acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb (--install): trying to overwrite '/usr/share/man/man1/acpi_fakekey.1.gz', which is also in package acpi-fakekey 0.137-3 Processing triggers for man-db ... Errors were encountered while processing: acpi-support_0.137-3_all.deb David Eccles (gringer) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
