Aptitude and apt-get

["Mike Kuhar" <mikewk147@attbi.com>]

Hi everyone,

I've got a strange one.  As root, in aptitude, I'll do an update
successfully.  Then I do an upgrade, the files download, the progress bar
will not show total progress, just progress per file, then reset to 0% for
the next file.  When the files complete downloading, I hit a carrige return
to go to the installation phase, I get an error telling me that aptitude
couldn't lock the cache, and will open it read only, and the upgrade stops.

Using apt-get, I update successfully, I do upgrade, the files start
downloading, again, instead of getting a total progress percentage at the
begining of each line, I just get some bogus number.  When downloading is
complete, I get an error message telling me that every file I just watched
download is missing, and maybe I should try again with --fix-missing.

If I do something like 'apt-get --reinstall install apt', this works.  If I
use apt-get to install a new package, it installs the new package
successfully along with any dependancies.

I'm running unstable with the 2.4.19 kernel on three machines, and this
strange behavior only affects one machine.  Anyone one got any ideas as to
the problem?