Re: dselect: unable to open/create access method lockfile

[Brian C <brianwc@berkeley.edu>]

Hi,

I describe a partial solution and the next problem below.

David Kirchner wrote:
> On 12/16/05, Brian C <brianwc@berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > dselect: unable to open/create access method lockfile
> >
> > but I still get the same error. Can anyone explain how to allow dselect
> > to create the lockfile it wants to?
>
> I'm not sure where it would put the lockfile, but you may be able to
> find out using 'strace'. strace will show you the system calls the
> process is attempting, including what files it's trying to read.
> 'strace -o foo dselect' and then 'grep access foo' or 'grep open foo'
> may give you the answer.

trying to apt-get something gave me a more useful error and I knew I 
needed the following files and directories:

mkdir -p /var/lib/dpkg
touch /var/lib/dpkg/status
mkdir -p /var/lib/dpkg/updates

This allows dselect to run. However, having lost my 'status' file is now 
a bigger problem because it created a new status file that believes I 
have NOTHING installed and so it wants to re-install every required 
Debian package. I'd rather not find out what happens if I let it do that.

How can I create a status file that accurately reflects the packages 
already installed on my system?

Brian