cdemu 1.0.0-1 installation broken, need help on dpkg/adept/package management

[myxal]

First and foremost: I am NOT using the dated version of cdemu from sourceforge - rather, I 'was' using the 1.0 version that came with an installation guide - don't even remember how I came to it, but this seems to be it. I installed the ...-1 version back in may, then sometime between then and now the kernel module stopped loading properly (perhaps after a kernel update?...).

The problem: The uninstall script for daemon seems to be hell-bent on exercising with the module:

$ sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq cdemu-daemon
dpkg - warning, overriding problem because --force enabled:
 Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
 reinstall it before attempting a removal.
(Reading database ... 90729 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing cdemu-daemon ...
 * Stopping CDEmu daemon
 * Killing daemon...                                                   [ OK ]
 * Removing kernel module...                                             [fail]
                                                              [fail]   
                                                            
invoke-rc.d: initscript cdemu-daemon, action "stop" failed.
dpkg: error processing cdemu-daemon (--remove):
 subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
 * Starting CDEmu daemon
 * Inserting kernel module...                                              [fail]
                                                            [fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript cdemu-daemon, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 cdemu-daemon

So I can't even remove it. When I try to reinstall it in adept I get the message that the package cannot be found - which is expected, since the package was installed from a file, rather than from a repository.

$ sudo apt-get --reinstall install cdemu-daemon
E: The package cdemu-daemon needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it.

Question 1: man pages are TLDR - how to invoke REINSTALL with with apt-get/dpkg/adept/aptitude from a package FILE and? Or do I just HAVE to add a file: URI to sources.list? (I'm about to try that out - EDIT: well, that seems to be a lot more difficult than I thought)

While I'm at it, what other programs do people use to access various CD/DVD images as a virtual devices? (simply mounting iso into the filesystem won't do - a directory won't act like an audio-CD/CD-extra)

[myxal]

Re: cdemu 1.0.0-1 installation broken, need help on dpkg/adept/package management

OK, I managed to fool dpkg into thinking the reinstallation (invoked from Konqueror context menu) was successful by making the script cdemu-daemon (in /etc/init.d/) always return 0 - after all, the script was was probably invoked only to make sure you don't delete a running daemon - but since the daemon can only run if the module is loaded (which it was not), I consider it to be safe - honestly, I think the author should first lsmod cdemu and ps | grep cdemud to see if the daemon is actually running or module is loaded and not just assume that they are and then misinterpret the error as "daemon couldn't be stopped" and "module couldn't be removed" mada mada dane