Bug#47839: dpkg: Fails to install packages if one package's .list file is broken
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.4.1.13
Severity: normal
My /var/lib/dpkg/info/ncurses-bin.list somehow became corrupted
recently, which has prevented me from installing packages (including
reinstalling ncurses-bin to fix the problem). In the end I had to ftp
the package, and 'tar ztf data.tar.gz > ncurses-bin.list', then edit
that by hand to make it correct, and place it in /var/lib/dpkg/info.
Dpkg should be able to recover somehow, if the package is still
available in the cache. Some kind of --force-reinstall which
overwrites the currently installed package, except dpkg is failing
before it gets to the stage where that would work. Or maybe an option
to regenerate corrupted .list files from the cached packages - dpkg -C
didn't pick up any problems when I ran it, which seems weird to be, if
the install part of dpkg can't do anything.
-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Kernel Version: Linux neuromancer 2.2.13pre15 #1 Fri Oct 8 17:51:40 NZDT 1999 i686 unknown
Versions of the packages dpkg depends on:
ii libc6 2.1.2-5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries and timezone
ii libncurses4 4.2-3.4 Shared libraries for terminal handling
ii libstdc++2.10 2.95.2-0pre2 The GNU stdc++ library
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