Disaster struck.

Power went out (no, we don't have a UPS) while my wife was working on her computer. The root partition (ext3) took a hit via a corrupted journal. I did manage to fix the filesystem via an alternate superblock, but the fsck command threw a boat load of things in /lost+found, and "jiggled" a few other filenames about a bit, and I seem to have a problem with dpkg/apt-get/aptitude:

Namely, anything I do via dpkg/apt-get/aptitude throws the following error:

/* begin error message */

dpkg: serious warning: files list file for package `libxalan2-java-gcj' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed.

dpkg: serious warning: files list file for package `xserver-xorg-video-all' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed.
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libxalan2-java-gcj_2.7.1-2_i386.deb (--unpack):
files list file for package `rplay-client' contains empty filename
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libxalan2-java-gcj_2.7.1-2_i386.deb
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

/* end error message */

Now, I back up /var/cache/debconf, but that's about it for the dpkg-related files. I'm a bit tired right now, and can't really afford to make any mistakes... It seems to me that the errors are with the dpkg files lists for the packages mentioned.

How would I go about fixing this problem?

((PS: don't suggest that I reinstall the system, it isn't going to happen))

Download the Debian Reference or Debian Installation manual from Debian.org. There are some chapters about restoring a corrupted package system.

jlinkels

OK... after getting 2 hours of sleep, having a tooth extracted, and playing RTFM, I came upon one solution that seemed to work for me.

I went to /var/lib/dpkg, backed up the status file

I edited the status file in the following way:

Those packages for which dpkg was having problems in the /var/lib/dpkg/info/ directory, I edited the "Status" entry in the status file from

"Status: install ok installed"

to

"Status: purge ok not-installed"

I then reinstalled the problem packages.

In short, I lied to dpkg and said that the problem packages were not installed, and I reinstalled the package over the existing package.

It seems to have worked for me, thus far.

NOTE: There are probably other solutions to this problem. This one was the simplest one that worked for me under the circumstances

aptitude reinstall package?
apt-get install --reinstall package?

Like I had said in my original posting, any activity with dpkg/apt-get/aptitude threw the error listed. Attempts to install, reinstall, or remove any package failed because, from what I could gather, /var/lib/dpkg/info/ directory had some inconsistencies with respect to the dpkg status file. The solution I found, listed above, was the only thing that I had found that worked.