brokenness somewhere in netbase or dpkg (or apt?)

[Ari Heitner <aheitner@andrew.cmu.edu>]

Hi,

  A couple of days ago when I apt-get upgraded, it gave me a new version
of netbase, 3.16-3. When it got to the install part, it ran its setup
script and started asking me questions about my networking config (which
surprised me -- why didn't it just use the config that was already
there?).

  I answered the questions and continued. It gave me an error and quit. I
put a hold on my previous version of netbase, 2.16-2, and retried to
apt-get upgrade. Now I get:

templestowe:~# apt-get upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back
  librpm1 lyx netbase rpm 
68 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/21.2MB of archives. After unpacking 10.3MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Can't use string ("ARRAY(0x8231354)") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs"
in use at /usr/lib/perl5/Debian/DebConf/Element/Dialog/Select.pm line 46,
<GEN0> chunk 5.
E: Sub-process dpkg-preconfig --apt returned an error code (29)
E: Failure running script dpkg-preconfig --apt

Not that I know any perl, but that line is in this file:

        # If it is more than will fit on the screen, just display the prompt
        # first in a series of message boxes.
        if ($lines > $screen_lines - 2) {
                $this->frontend->showtext($text);
                # Now make sure the short description is displayed in the
                # dialog they actually enter info into.
                ($text, $lines, $columns)=$this->frontend->sizetext(
                        $this->question->description);
        }

        my $default=$this->question->value;
        my @params=();
#-----the below is line #46
        my @choices=@{$this->question->choices};



I don't know if netbase is actually the problem at all -- it also gave me
a new version of dpkg, 1.4.1.13, and the error seems more likely to be
coming from there.

Any ideas/suggestions/comments/snide remarks?

Please cc: me on any list posts.





Cheers,


Ari Heitner
-----------
DC: 703/5733512		CMU: 412/8622699
www.singularity-software.com
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