1st a little background:

A few months ago I tried the free 1 month trial of Boingo mobile. I used it at Starbucks. When selecting their AT&T access point the connection started, the Boingo logo appeared in the status bar and I was logged in. All well and good -- it worked.

The time expired and recently I signed up for a Boingo Mobile account. My problem is that the previously installed Boingo application won't let me enter my new password and won't let me uninstall so I can install a clean Boingo ap and register my password. Neither the Aplication Manger, apt-get or dpkg will let me install, update or uninstall. I'm running the latest Diablo and most recent version of the Boingo application on an N810. Boingo support can't help me.

I believe that Boingo did something nasty to insure that people couldn't reinstall their their package over and over for additional free months. Here's the terminal session I ran to try and remove Boingo:

~ $ sudo dpkg --force-all -r boingomobile
(Reading database ... 18122 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing boingomobile ...
invoke-rc.d: not a symlink: "/etc/rc2.d/S20boingomobile"
invoke-rc.d: dangling symlink: "/etc/rc2.d/S20boingomobile"
dpkg: error processing boingomobile (--remove):
subprocess pre-removal script returned error exit status 102
***
* Updating MIME database in /usr/share/mime...
* Warning: Unknown media type in type 'sketch/png'
Wrote 70 strings at 20 - 500
Wrote aliases at 500 - 564
Wrote parents at 564 - 5c8
Wrote literal globs at 5c8 - 5cc
Wrote suffix globs at 5cc - 1594
Wrote full globs at 1594 - 1598
Wrote magic at 1598 - 20ec
Wrote namespace list at 20ec - 20f0
***
***
* Updating MIME database in /usr/share/mime...
* Error in type 'application/x-boingo-swconfig-v1'
* (in /usr/share/mime/packages/goboingo.xml):
* Invalid category name 'other' in <osso:category> element.
* Error in type 'application/account+xml'
* (in /usr/share/mime/packages/mc-import.xml):
* Invalid category name 'settings' in <osso:category> element.
* Warning: Unknown media type in type 'sketch/png'
***
Cache file created successfully.
invoke-rc.d: not a symlink: "/etc/rc2.d/S20boingomobile"
invoke-rc.d: dangling symlink: "/etc/rc2.d/S20boingomobile"
dpkg: error while cleaning up:
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 102
Errors were encountered while processing:
boingomobile
~ $

I've spent hours on this problem and wish to avoid having to reflash. Can anyone be of help?

Nope. I think they just did something dumb.

Try this:

sudo mv /etc/rc2.d/S20boingomobile /root/S20boingomobile.bak
sudo dpkg --purge boingomobile

It's strange, but I just installed boingo and it linked its initscript to /etc/rc2.d/S99boingomobile so I think they must have changed something.

Try register as a different user and see whether it work, they should also give you another month free . I know that is NOT what you ask but it will narrow down the diagnosis.

bun

Thank you so much. That worked like a charm and I good to go with Boingo again. The tech at Boingo asked me to email him the solution if I found one so that he could help others. I'll be doing that.