Re: libstring-approx-perl broke updating Woody to Sarge

[Lance Tagliapietra <lancetag@Luminet.net>]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 09:33:16PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, Lance Tagliapietra wrote:
> > In any case, I decided to go and attempt the upgrade, and have run into 
> > the following problem now when attempting to use apt-get or dpkg or 
> > aptitude:
> > 
> > dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 41026 
> > package `libstring-approx-perl':
> >  field name `Sectch' must be followed by colon
> > 
> > I'm kinda in a catch-22, since even dpkg -l will abort with that error, 
> > nor can I seem to install or remove packages, as that error will come 
> > up.
> 
> Have you tried just removing the offending line? Or removing the whole section
> related to libstring-approx-perl (it doesn't really look like a critical
> package anyway)?

OK, I didn't originally realize that the error was in the database file.  
I thought it was an issue with the version of the library.  I deleted 
that entry from the file and sure enough, no more errors.

> I guess dpkg will just re-add it during the next `apt-get update' 
run, but
> hopefully the real problem is fixed at that time. Upgrading dpkg and apt-get is
> probably also needed.
> 
> Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
> 
> 						Geert
> 
> --
> Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert@linux-m68k.org
> 
> In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
> when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
> 							    -- Linus Torvalds

Thanks,

--Lance