Bug#867997: jessie->stretch, all apt clients break with /var/lib/dpkg/status realpath error

[Alan Schwartz <alansz@uic.edu>]

Package: upgrade-reports

Version: 9

Severity: grave

Followed the Debian 9 release notes to upgrade a jessie i386 (686) machine to stretch. No apt sources except official debian ones. Following the apt-get dist-upgrade step, attempts to use apt-get, apt-cache, aptitude

produce the following error:

# apt-get update

Hit:1 http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stretch-updates InRelease

Ign:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch InRelease

Get:3 http://security.debian.org stretch/updates InRelease [62.9 kB]

Hit:4 http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch Release

Fetched 62.9 kB in 1s (38.2 kB/s)

Reading package lists... Error!

E: flAbsPath on /var/lib/dpkg/status failed - realpath (22: Invalid argument)

E: Could not open file  - open (2: No such file or directory)

E: Problem opening

E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Error persists after reboot of the system.

However, dpkg -l and similar still work. The /var/lib/dpkg structure appears to be intact:

$ ls -l /var/lib/dpkg

total 6904

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul  7 16:39 alternatives

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1379057 Apr 28  2015 available

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1361618 Apr 28  2015 available-old

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root       8 Feb 20  2006 cmethopt

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     953 Jul  7 15:54 diversions

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    1034 Jul  7 15:54 diversions-old

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root  339968 Jul  7 16:03 info

-rw-r----- 1 root root       0 Jul  7 16:44 lock

-rw-r----- 1 root root       0 Feb 20  2006 methlock

drwxr-xr-x 7 root root    4096 Feb  7  2011 methods

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 May 26  2005 parts

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     460 Jul  7 16:40 statoverride

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     421 Jul  7 16:40 statoverride-old

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1961225 Jul  7 16:44 status

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1961225 Jul  7 16:44 status-old

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul  7 16:43 triggers

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Jul  7 16:44 updates

I am using Debian GNU/Linux 2.2, kernel 2.2.17-pre-patch-13 and libc6 2.1.3-10.

Earlier in the week, I did a similar upgrade on another system with same hardware and didn't experience a problem.