[Athanasius]

In trying to compile pgl 2.0.3 using 'debuild' on a Debian/stable (lenny) system I got the error:

dpkg-checkbuilddeps: Unmet build dependencies: debhelper (>= 7.0.50~)
dpkg-buildpackage: warning: Build dependencies/conflicts unsatisfied; aborting.

just doing 'debian/rules binary' instead resulted in the compilation and build of *.deb files working, as does the suggested 'debuild -d' to ignore dependencies.

I added this dependency for the override_... targets in debian/rules. So I added that dependency according to the debhelper documentation. And I just verified in the debhelper changelog that they were introduced in 7.0.50.

Please verify if you have these files in your pglcmd package (dpkg -L pglcmd):
/etc/cron.daily/pglcmd
/etc/network/if-up.d/pglcmd
/etc/init.d/pgl
/etc/logrotate.d/pglcmd

Currently handling these files is all I need the override targets for. But that will change in the future.

I guess you have installed debhelper 7.0.15!?

Looking closer I do indeed have debhelper 7.0.15 installed:

18:29:06 0$ aptitude show debhelper
Package: debhelper
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 7.0.15

BUT, look more closely at the error:

dpkg-checkbuilddeps: Unmet build dependencies: debhelper (>= 7.0.50~)

18:30:47 0$ grep -r debhelper debian/
debian/pglcmd.config:# generated by other debhelper scripts.
debian/control:Build-Depends: debhelper (>= 7.0.50~),
...

Stray tilde ?

18:32:37 0$ dpkg -L pglcmd | grep '/etc/cron.daily/pglcmd|/etc/network/if-up.d/pglcmd|/etc/init.d/pgl|/etc/logrotate.d/pglcmd'
root@jimblewix:/usr/local/src/pgl-2.0.3;
18:32:58 0$

And I guess this would be exactly why it fail to stop/start the service on install too.

Hang on, I'm blind, I have 7.0., your build-depends is after .~

http://packages.debian.org/lenny/debhelper confirms that 7.0.15 is the current stable version.

Confusingly testing has 8.0.0 (same in unstable).

And even backports.debian.org is on 8.0.0~bpo50+2

Where did you get your 7.0.50~ from ?

This Tracker item was closed automatically by the system. It was
previously set to a Pending status, and the original submitter
did not respond within 14 days (the time period specified by
the administrator of this Tracker).

Just to bring this issue to a clean end (and then finally working again on the FORWARD issues reported by you):
"7.0.50~" is from the debconf documentation. And as we've confirmed in the other bug, we really need this version (or newer). So in Lenny you should use backports.