dpkg locking my machine from time to time/ fsck

[Guilherme Soares Zahn <gzahn@cnen.gov.br>]

Hi there,

    As it was the second time I've experienced SERIOUS problems with
dpkg this week, I think it's worth poting something here...

    Monday I was updating my gmc package when dpkg locked (I think it
was on the ¨unpacking replacement...¨ stage) and the system became so
unstable that I had to reboot the machine. Today it happened again (now
I was updating the samba package), also in the ¨unpacking replacement¨
stage, but now the PC really froze and I was forced to reboot it the
hard way (power off, power on and pray).

    Now, both times fsck complained (of course!) and eventually found
¨Duplicate/Bad blocks in use¨. Both times I had to use e2fsck to solve
the problems (fsck complains about something like ¨unexpected
unconsistency found¨), and today I had the attention to run e2fsck w/
the ¨-c¨ option (check for bad blocks) enabled, but it didn't find any.

    So, the (rather obvious! ;-) question is: what's up? Is it a problem
with dpkg, a problem with my harddisk or what? Also, why doesn't fsck
solve the problem but e2fsck does?

    I really appreciate all kinds of feedback on this problem...

    Ciao,

        Guilherme Zahn