Hi Dennis,
(Thanks Bob):
Dennis Wicks wrote via Bob Proulx:
I really appreciate all the help, each new response seems to get me
a little further, but then there is another brick wall that I can't
figure out how to get past.
When I use the "dpkg --root=..." option it doesn't seg fault, but it
can't write on "bad root" to create the lock file. And some
experimentation confirms that the "good machine" can't write
anything on the "bad root". I don't know if I can fix this at all,
because when I try anything on the broken system that uses a program
that isn't already running I get a seg fault!
If anybody has any further suggestions I would be more than happy to
hear them and give them a try!
I'd suggest unmounting and running fsck on the bad partition if you have
not already done so, and then being sure to mount it rw when you remount.
If the broken system's /var or /usr or /tmp or ... were on separate
partitions, they will have to be checked and mounted in the right places
in the subsidiary heirarchy. You may need some or all of /boot, /dev,
/proc, and /sys mounted in there too.
Within the bad disk the lock file .../var/lib/dpkg/lock should look like
this with "ls -l":
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Dec 6 17:27 lock
... and like this with "lsattr":
------------------- lock
If the lock file exists you could try "touch" to see if anything weird
happens and let us know.
--Mike Bird
P.S. If you reply to this Dennis please reply to the list and please
quote my text above in your reply so we can keep the discussion intact
for future people who look to your thread when they encounter problems.