Installing packages hangs

[Wolfgang Jährling <wolfgang@pro-linux.de>]

Hi!

I thought the following is a problem which several people encountered
before, and that there was a workaround for it, but I could not find
anything about it with Google or in my local archive of the mailing
lists.

In a fresh J1 installation, doing "apt-get install screen" (or the same
with any other package) hangs until I abort it with ^C.  The last thing
it prints is "18% [Working]", sometimes with 25%, sometimes with 0%, and
sometimes even right before it would print this line.

Starting it in rpctrace made it abort with

E: Unable to write to /var/cache/apt/
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Thanks in advance for any pointers that help in solving this problem.

Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang

-- 
Wolfgang Jährling  <wolfgang@pro-linux.de>  \\  http://stdio.cjb.net/
Debian GNU/Hurd user && Debian GNU/Linux user \\  http://www.gnu.org/
The Hurd Hacking Guide: http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hacking-guide/
["Enjoy this bug as long as you can, because when we will fix it, you ]
[ will get the correct, non-functional behaviour" -- Marcus Brinkmann ]