/var/lib/dpkg/available strangeness
Hello,
I have just attempted my first non-CD (ie. LAN) install of Debian, and would
like to relate my experiences for the edification of all ;-)
My attempt to install potato was a minor disaster, but I am putting that down
mostly to my incompetence and a suspect floppy disk. During this disaster I
discovered that the postgresql version I want is only in woody, so I though,
what the hell, we'll install woody.
The install of woody went well until I had nearly finished installing the
packages I wanted (only about 8 left, unfortunately including xfree86 stuff
which I kinda need) when I started getting odd error messages from dselect,
along the lines of 'syntax error in /var/lib/dpkg/available: newline in field
name Taskunix-server'. In fact _every_ task field in 'available' had the ': '
taken out of it. Similarly, every occurence of 'meta-package: yes' had been
mangled to 'meta-packageyes'. This took me some time to figure out. Eventually
I dredged my knowledge of sed near enough to my conciousness to fix the file,
only to find out that about two times out of three when I run dselect (or
apt-get install, or dpkg --install) it just re-reads the lists from the mirror
I'm using (at least I think this is where it's coming from) with the same
errors.
Is this:
(a) Something dumb I'm doing that's answered in a FAQ somewhere that I can't
find.
(b) Some mistake someone's made somewhere in the package lists.
(c) Some mistake mirror.aarnet.edu.au (my nearest mirror) has made when
mirroring the distro.
(d) Some mistake somewhere else that I can't think of.
Any help greatly appreciated, as this is holding me up somewhat.
Tom
--
Tom Cook
"I do not believe, you know, that the art and practice of
sitting on the fence is sufficiently appreciated in our
society. To me, it is an occupational necessity."
- Prince Phillip
University of Adelaide Information Technology Services
Level 6
10 Pultney St.
Adelaide University, AUSTRALIA 5005
Ph : +61 8 8303 6110
e-mail: tom.cook@adelaide.edu.au
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