Debian package rescue

[Charles Curley]

I installed four interchange packages on an Ubuntu box. The
installation was botched: the MySQL user and database were never set
up. Now the server refuses to start, and I cannot remove them or
re-install them. This also affects other packages.

I get messages like this one:

--------------------------------------------------
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  interchange-ui
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 3260kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 103832 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing interchange-ui ...
Stopping Interchange Server: No process in pidfile `/var/run/interchange/interchange.pid' found running; none killed.
interchange.
Starting Interchange Server: Password: 
invoke-rc.d: initscript interchange, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing interchange-ui (--remove):
 subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 interchange-ui
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# 
--------------------------------------------------

If I try to start the server manually, it silently fails:

--------------------------------------------------
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# /etc/init.d/interchange start
Starting Interchange Server: Password: 
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# ps aux | grep -i interchange
root     20072  0.0  0.0   2976   764 pts/1    R+   19:13   0:00 grep -i interchange
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# 
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# /etc/init.d/interchange start
Starting Interchange Server: Password: 
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# ps aux | grep -i interchange
root     20072  0.0  0.0   2976   764 pts/1    R+   19:13   0:00 grep -i interchange
root at dragon:/etc/interchange# 
--------------------------------------------------

I have no idea what password it wants. I give it the password for the
user "interchange", but that doesn't work.

How do I get rid of the damned thing. Suggestions?

-- 

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