Bug#409336: apt-get erratic (segfaults, unmet dependencies, hanging)

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Louis-Dominique Dubeau <ldd@lddubeau.com> writes:

> I did an apt-get update today and then a dist-upgrade without any
> problem.  I can see two possibilities for the fact that the problem
> currently seems resolved:
>
> 1. apt-get really has a randomly occurring bug.
>
> 2. The mirrors were temporarily distributing incorrect lists of packages
> and that caused apt-get to misbehave.

In that case the Release file and Release.gpg file would not verify or
ftp-master would have to have a broken Packages file already. It has
happened before but not often and apt-get does not segfault from that.

> If the problem is due to the 2nd possibility, I would suggest that
> apt-get should perform a bit more self-analysis so as to produce
> informative error messages.  I'm still surprised that apt-get reported
> that some packages were not available to fulfill dependencies even
> though those packages were reported by dpkg as already installed.
>
> Thanks,
> Louis

3. You have one of the kernel versions where msync is broken

apt-get uses mmap for the *.bin files and with a broken kernel they
become corrupted and cause apt to fail.

MfG
        Goswin