[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

What to do when apt, dpkg and dselect dump core



I recently upgraded to apt_0.0.16-1

Things seemed to be going fine till today.  Today I noticed that apt-get,
dpkg and dselect all dump core -

* apt-get 

apt-get update works fine
apt-get upgrade dumps core.  The packages get downloaded fine to
/var/cache/apt/archives/  

* dselect

'Access' (set to ftp) and 'Upgrade' work fine.  When I chosoe 'Select' in
the dselect menu there is a core dump.  If I move to 'Install' without
select (I know there are about 7 packages to be upgraded), the packages get
downloaded fine.  The install of the downloaded packages fails.

* dpkg

dpkg --install,  dpkg --remove and dpkg --list all dump core.  Doing an
strace shows that dpkg dumps core after opening /var/lib/dpkg/stats and
beginning to read from it.


I strongly suspect that my status file has been messed up.  Unfortunately, I
cannot move to the slightly older status file because it has some rather old
info (I checked).  I even tried using the slightly older status file.  Same
result.  core dump when beginning to read from the status file.

Here are my questions -

* Is there a way to regenerate the status file?  Shouldn't there be a way?

* What should one do if all avenues of upgrading dump core?  I am not averse
to manual edits of files.

I know that this is precisely the reason why hamm is frozen and that apt is
in projects/experimental.  I know that this is to be expected when I play
around with software that is still in development.  Only I am to blame for
the state of my machine.  I was fully aware of such things happening when I
decided to play around with apt.

S.
-- 
 "Backups are for wimps.  Real Men upload their data to an FTP site
        and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Sudhakar C13n   http://people.netscape.com/thaths/   Indentured Slave


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org


Reply to: