Re: Bug#2178: dpkg unclear error message

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Mark W. Eichin writes ("Bug#2178: dpkg unclear error message"):
> I cooked up a simple package for the binaries of the executor mac
> emulator (unpacked the tar file, added a DEBIAN/control, ran dpkg --build)
> and on installing it, got the following:
> 
> depreciation+# dpkg --install /tmp/epkg.deb                 (Reading database ... 21834 files and directories currently installed.)
> Unpacking executor (from /tmp/epkg.deb) ...
> dpkg: error processing /tmp/epkg.deb (--install):
>  unpick of dpkg-deb tar output failed (-1) for unknown reason: No such file or directory
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  /tmp/epkg.deb
> Exit 1
> 
> It doesn't tell me *what* file or directory is not found, 

The error message is misleading.  It means that the package is
corrupted - the filesystem tarfile inside the archive had a header
checksum error or a broken header field or was truncated or something.

I don't see how dpkg-deb could have done that itself, unless perhaps
you have a very odd version of tar or gzip.

1.0.11 has better error messages for this, so I'm closing this bug
report.  Sorry to put you to the trouble of researching things
yourself ...

If you can get dpkg-deb to build files that dpkg thinks are corrupted
please file a new bug report.

Thanks,
Ian.