Weird problems with dpkg and libc 5.4.7
Over the last few weeks I've been having some strange problems with dpkg and
libc 5.4.7. At first I was sure I'd be seeing some mail on this list about
it, because other people would be having the same problem. But when that
didn't come, I thought I must have just screwed up my system in some way.
But having repaired it, I'm not so sure...
For the record, I'm using dpkg 1.4.0.3 and libc5 5.4.7-5 and -6. The
problem seems to affect older versions of dpkg too (to fix the problem, I
had to get a copy of libc5.2.18 - just getting an old dpkg didn't help).
The symptoms are spurious messages from dpkg when doing installs:
Preparing to replace libc5 (using .../base/libc5_5.4.7-6.deb) ...
dpkg: failed to open package info file `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/32' for reading: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing
/home/debian/development/binary-i386/base/libc5_5.4.7-6.deb (--install):
subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 2
It's right: /var/lib/dpkg/updates/32 doesn't exist (even during execution).
Some work with gdb (after effecting a repair) seems to indicate that
scandir() is returning non-existant files in dbmodify.c.
If I use LD_PRELOAD=/tmp/debian/old-lib/lib/libc.so.5.2.18, then it works
(and if I use this to enable me to downgrade to libc5.2.18).
Note that it doesn't seem to be consistent. It's not always "32" that's
found (though that is most common), and sometimes I think I've fixed it, but
then it breaks again... One of the interesting variants is where it tells
me to upgrade to a newer version of dpkg... :-)
# dpkg -i /home/debian/development/binary-i386/base/debianutils_1.3.deb
(Reading database ... 7354 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking debianutils (from .../base/debianutils_1.3.deb) ...
dpkg: failed to open package info file `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/3dq' for
reading: No such file or directory
Please upgrade to a newer version of dpkg
dpkg: error processing
/home/debian/development/binary-i386/base/debianutils_1.3.deb (--install):
subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
/home/debian/development/binary-i386/base/debianutils_1.3.deb
#
I can't find any "Please upgrade ..." message in the source though... ??
Note that 'dpkg --install' seems to be about the only thing that's broken on
my system... Everything else *seems* to work fine.
Hmm, with this recent discussion of processor-dependent optimisations, I
perhaps feel I should mention that all this is on a clunky old 386DX/33...
# dpkg -l dpkg libc5
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err:
uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-===============-==============-============================================
ii dpkg 1.4.0.3 Package maintenance system for Debian Linux
ii libc5 5.4.7-6 The Linux C library version 5 (run-time libr
#
Can anybody offer any help on this one?
Warwick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warwick Harvey email: warwick@cs.mu.OZ.AU
Department of Computer Science phone: +61-3-9287-9171
University of Melbourne fax: +61-3-9348-1184
Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052 web: http://www.cs.mu.OZ.AU/~warwick
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