On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 11:35:20PM +0000, Jason Wood wrote: > > Hi, > > I sent an email to the list on Saturday, but I have been unable to discover > what is wrong with apt-get on my machine. Dselect & dpkg work fine, but > apt-get fails, saying : > > Reading Package Lists... Error! > E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (1) > E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. [If you can reproduce it, it will certainly be worth a bug report.] Sounds like /var/lib/dpkg/status has become corrupted in some way. Luckily dpkg (or apt?) does keep backups of that file (/var/backups/dpkg.status.*) and you may be able to recover by reverting to that backup. *BUT* that is likely to put /var/lib/dpkg/status "out-of-sync" with what *actually* is installed on the machine. What packages did you last install/deinstall ? A diff between /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/backups/dpkg.status.* may refresh your memory. Chances are that you have to re-install (/re-de-install) them to get things back in sync. > [[snip]] > > Is there any way that I can get apt-get to be more verbose about exactly > where the parsing error is occurring and what it is? I have looked for a > newer version of apt-get than the one I have, but I don't think one has come > out yet. Perhaps man apt.conf? It briefly mentions debug options on apt, but none of them look interesting in this context. But surely, there must be *something*? > Where can I get an older version from, to try that? I am running > testing/unstable and apt-get appears to be the same version in both, and > trying to go back to stable would be more hassle than it's worth! > > Are there any other hints of things to try to get apt working again, without > doing a full reinstall which would be total overkill :-) > > -- > Jason Wood > Persistence is a virtue HTH -- Karl E. Jørgensen karl@jorgensen.com www.karl.jorgensen.com ==== Today's fortune: It's later than you think, the joint Russian-American space mission has already begun.
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