Re: unable to parse package file; aptitude effectively dead.
On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 01:09:56PM -0500, hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 11:49:39AM -0500, Joey Hess wrote:
> > hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > > While I'm waiting for someone to *fix* bug 405506, does anyone have an
> > > idea how to recover from it? Is a reinstall in order?
> > >
> > > Yesterday aptitude reported
> > > Unable to parse package file /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates
> > > This happened on an etch that was just installed the same day from a
> > > previous-day netinstall daily build.
> > >
> > > The file does exist, and appears to be binary gibberish.
> >
> > In the bug report, you say:
> >
> > | tried startx, got the black screen of death -- completely unresponsive
> > | to mouse or keyboard.
> >
> > Hard rebooting a wedged system can result in corrupted files in rare
> > cases, and it sounds like this is what you have. The pkgstates file is a
> > plain text file. The chances of this being an aptitude bug seem very
> > near to zero. Unless you or someone else can reproduce the bug (either
> > the hang starting X or the file system corruption), it's certianly not
> > grave severity.
>
> It is starting to look as if it was a problem with jfs, which, I was
> told, was specifically engineered to prevent this kind of trouble.
> Certainly, if it was an aptitude bug, it would have been grave. But
> since aptitude seems not to blame, I think we should consider it solved
> for aptitude. Perhaps it should be referred to jfs? I'll leave the
> decision up to you. I don't think there are enough specifics that this
> bug would help the jfs maintainers to find the problem, so there may be
> no point.
> I had used jfs as file system because reports on this mailing list
> indicated that it was more resistant to this kind of thing than either
> ext3 or reiser. But I've never had problems of this sort with either of
> them, and had problems with jfs the first day I used it, so maybe in
> the reinstall I should go back to reiser of ext3.
>
>
Hi Hendrik,
I missed the start of this thread but I use JFS (and it may have been my
comments that prompted you to use it).
Was this file open or being used when the system crashed or lost power?
If so, I don't think there's any filesystem that can protect an
individual file in that case. I wish there were. The problem I had
with other filesystems is that after such a power loss, the filesystem
itself would be corrupted and I'd lose data during recovery.
Its also possible that whatever caused the system crash overwrote the
files' buffers which then got dutifully committed to disk. This would
not be a problem with JFS itself.
I'm also a little leary of X. Since by its nature it takes over one's
video hardware, if it crashes it can leave you with not console. I tend
to leave a getty runing on a serial port for just such emergencies (grab
a computer or terminal, a serial null-modem cable and away you go).
I'l be watching to see what other JFS issues appear from this.
Good luck,
Doug.
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