Some advice to fix up my package database :-)

[Adam Warner <lists@consulting.net.nz>]

Hi all,

I've been using alien for the first time today. Now I can't install any
package using apt-get (it might not be the alien packages but I thought
I should mention it).

Before I make a real mess I thought I'd get some advice on the error
message:

apt-get install ucbmpeg-play
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ucbmpeg-play 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18  not
upgraded.
Need to get 0B/69.2kB of archives. After unpacking 177kB will be used.
(Reading database ... dpkg: error processing
/var/cache/apt/archives/ucbmpeg-play_2.3p-10.1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 files list file for package `libncurses5-dev' is missing final newline
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/ucbmpeg-play_2.3p-10.1_i386.deb
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The strange error message is:
files list file for package `libncurses5-dev' is missing final newline

This happens when trying to install any package.

I can't even do a dpkg --purge --force-all libncurses5-dev

I'm told "Processing was halted because there were too many errors" (the
same error message above).

Thanks,
Adam