apt-get failure

[Bob Hilliard <hilliard@debian.org>]

     I have a cron job that runs every morning that includes:

        apt-get -q update && apt-get -q -s dist-upgrade

     Today it produced the following error message:

Fetched 6713kB in 28s (238kB/s)
Reading Package Lists...
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
E: Error occured while processing aspell (NewVersion1)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

     My last upgrade was January 15, and this cron job ran
successfully on the 16th and 17th, so I doubt if it is a bug in a newly
upgraded package.

     /var/lib/dpkg/status looks normal, and has the following
permissions:

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root       718493 Jan 18 10:36 /var/lib/dpkg/status

     I don't know if "Dynamic MMap ran out of room" refers to memory,
but I have plenty available:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1030220     876292     153928          0     128236     488572
-/+ buffers/cache:     259484     770736
Swap:      2096624          0    2096624

     What is the probable cause of this failure?

Regards

Bob
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