Bug#308082: /var/lib/dpkg/status file corrupted by external package

[Malte Cornils <malte@cornils.net>]

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.10.27
Severity: wishlist

Hi,

I've installed the commercial nxclient package a while ago. That package
had a Description field with an empty line (so, the  . was lacking).
dpkg did not prevent installation of this file and thus, allowed the
status file to become corrupted.

This in effect caused an unrelated maintainer script to die because
grep-dctrl fails with such a file - so, corrupted status files can have
bad consequences.

Since running linda etc. are not necessary for external packagers and
wrong Description fields are not totally rare, code could be implemented
to check for such a condition and prevent installation.

Would that fit into the design of dpkg, or is another package a better
place for that?

-Malte Cornils

PS: I just checked, later nxclient packages are already fixed.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.10-mc
Locale: LANG=de_DE@euro, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii  dselect                     1.10.27      a user tool to manage Debian pa
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-21 GNU C Library: Shared libraries

-- no debconf information