Bug#881266: apt-files fails with LZ4F error on calling apt-helper with xargs

[Ara Keary <ara.keary@gmail.com>]

Package: apt-file
Version: 3.1.5
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable

Dear maintainers,

installing apt-file and running

  apt-file update

works well, but any search fails with an error ; for instance

  apt-file search ogg123

fails with

   E: LZ4F:
/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_debian_dists_testing_main_Contents-amd64.lz4
Read error (18446744073709551615: ERROR_GENERIC)
   Command xargs -0r /usr/lib/apt/apt-helper cat-file exited with code 123 at
/usr/bin/apt-file line 240.
   E: A subprocess exited uncleanly (raw: 31488)

and similarly for other searches.

Downgrading apt-file to stable (3.1.4) from testing/unstable (3.1.5) does not
solve the problem.

Cleaning the database with
  aptitude clean
or even with
  apt-get --list-cleanup update
does not change the problem.

Purging apt-file, reinstalling and re-updating the apt-file database doesn't
solve the issue either.

It seems the package is thus unusable. It seems the issue is related to a lz4
library, but i could not find a way to go further.

Best,

Ara



-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.13.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages apt-file depends on:
ii  apt                      1.6~alpha4
ii  libapt-pkg-perl          0.1.33
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl   0.416-1+b3
ii  libregexp-assemble-perl  0.36-1
ii  perl                     5.26.1-2

apt-file recommends no packages.

apt-file suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information