Fun with diverted files

I recently wanted to install a new program on grumpy, my MythTV box. apt-get install spat out a bunch of changes and dependencies, but I let it go ahead. What I didn't notice was a coreutils upgrade that was tucked away in the list, and led to the following error


Preparing to replace coreutils 5.2.1-2 (using .../coreutils_6.10-6_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement coreutils ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/coreutils_6.10-6_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.1.gz', which is the diverted version of `/usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.textutils.1.gz'
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/coreutils_6.10-6_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


Woah. Now what? After some fumbling around, I gave up for the evening. It was late, I was tired.

This morning I took another look at this. apt-get install -f led to the same error. After some googling and browsing around, I tried


grumpy# dpkg-divert --list | grep md5sumlocal diversion of /usr/bin/md5sum.textutils to /usr/bin/md5sum
local diversion of /usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.textutils.1.gz to /usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.1.gz
grumpy# dpkg-divert --remove /usr/bin/md5sum.textutils
Removing `local diversion of /usr/bin/md5sum.textutils to /usr/bin/md5sum'
grumpy# dpkg-divert --remove /usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.textutils.1.gz
Removing `local diversion of /usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.textutils.1.gz to /usr/share/man/man1/md5sum.1.gz'


Running apt-get install -f again fixed up everything and the queued packages installed.

I didn't really know about how diversions worked before this (though, now that I got to play with them, it's kinda cool), so I'm baffled where this local diversion came from, as all the other diversions in the list are maintained by packages.