Re: apt-get has stopped working on my machine
On Thursday 21 March 2002 9:05 am, Karl E. Jorgensen wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 11:35:20PM +0000, Jason Wood wrote:
> > I sent an email to the list on Saturday, but I have been unable to
> > discover what is wrong with apt-get on my machine. Dselect & dpkg work
> > fine, but apt-get fails, saying :
> >
> > Reading Package Lists... Error!
> > E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (1)
> > E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
>
> [If you can reproduce it, it will certainly be worth a bug report.]
Ok, I have now sent a bug report.
> Luckily dpkg (or apt?) does keep backups of that file
> (/var/backups/dpkg.status.*) and you may be able to recover by reverting
> to that backup. *BUT* that is likely to put /var/lib/dpkg/status
> "out-of-sync" with what *actually* is installed on the machine.
Cheers, that's exactly what I needed. but...
>
> What packages did you last install/deinstall ? A diff between
> /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/backups/dpkg.status.* may refresh your
> memory. Chances are that you have to re-install (/re-de-install) them
> to get things back in sync.
As far as I can remember I have not installed any new packages. A diff
between the previous working status file and the current broken one is only
90 lines long! I was getting ready to uninstall some files, but I didn't
actually get round to it before the status file broke. So I don't think I
will have to much trouble if I revert to a previous file and then update
again. I'm going to try and figure out what's blatantly wrong first though.
If anyone is interested, I've uploaded my current (broken) status file
(gzipped) here :
http://www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/apt-problems/status.gz
And I have provided the last working status file here :
http://www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/apt-problems/dpkg.status.2.gz
And the diff between the two files here :
http://www.uchian.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/apt-problems/diff
--
Jason Wood
Persistence is a virtue
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