Bug#191029: dpkg: missing Maintainer: field will corrupt status file
Package: dpkg
Version: N/A; reported 2003-04-27
Severity: important
If you install a .deb that has a control file that is missing the
Maintainer field, dpkg will corrupt the status file.
You will get the error:
Reading Package Lists... Error!
W: Encountered status field in a non-version description
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
A diff between status and status-old found:
Status:....
Priority:....
Section:....
Maintainer: -1), libfreetype6, libgal19 (>= 0.19), libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 (>= 0.16.0-1), libgdk-pixbuf2 (>= 0.16.0-1), libghttp1 (>=
...........lots of junk...........
Version:.....
In other words: It was putting random text into the Maintainer field.
The .deb was missing the Maintainer field - it did get a warning about
it when building, but dpkg should not corrupt status if that happens.
-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux blueberry 2.4.19 #10 Fri Dec 13 01:56:53 EST 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
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