dpkg: "fgets gave null string"?
When I tried to install a package today, dpkg gave me a weird error about a
different package. This came out of the blue -- the package in question had
not been installed or played with in quite some time.
The error message was, "fgets gave an empty null-terminated string from
/var/lib/dpkg/info/kernel-source-2.0.30.list" and it happened when I was
trying to install netscape3_3.04-3.deb (although I had the same error when
trying to remove or install any other package):
Updating package status cache...done
Checking system integrity...ok
The following NEW packages will be installed:
netscape3
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0b/23.2k of archives. After unpacking 74.0k will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
(Reading database ... dpkg: error processing netscape3_3.04-3.deb
(--unpack):
fgets gave an empty null-terminated string from /var/lib/dpkg/info/kernel-source-2.0.30.list'
Errors were encountered while processing:
netscape3_3.04-3.deb
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process returned an error code
Some errors occured while unpacking. I'm going to configure the
packages that were installed. This may result in duplicate errors
or errors caused by missing dependencies. This is OK, only the errors
above this message are important. Please fix them and run [I]nstall again
Press enter to contiune.
My workaround? Temporarily mv kernel-source-2.0.30* to a different
directory, install the netscape3, and then mv the kernel-source* files back.
It worked, although dpkg reported that a "serious problem" was found. Is
there a better solution to the problem -- and can anyone tell me why this
happpened in the first place?
As always -- thanks.
Reply to: