dpkg is dead! error in /var/lib/dpkg/available

dezert_fox · 09-01-2004, 10:28 PM

Apparently /var/lib/dpkg/available has all sort of problems... I've been going through trying to fix them for a while now, and they just don't stop coming. Is there a way to regenerate the file?

leonscape · 09-01-2004, 10:37 PM

try

dpkg --clear-avail
apt-get update

The available file Contains the packages available from Debian. The status file is more important, and contains the status of your system, and cannot be rebuilt.

HappyTux · 09-02-2004, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by leonscape
The status file is more important, and contains the status of your system, and cannot be rebuilt.

You always have the backup file that is created to fall back on if it gets corrupted, it saved my ass once on a Woody install.

Code:

[HappyTux:/home/stephen]# ll /var/lib/dpkg/status*
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 896K 2004-09-01 19:46 /var/lib/dpkg/status
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 896K 2004-09-01 19:46 /var/lib/dpkg/status-old

kdb4 · 05-16-2006, 04:53 PM

I was having similar problems with /var/lib/dpkg/status file, I vi the file and there were misspelling and bad characters in it. Along with other strange things that have been occuring today, I happened to think about running memtest86+, (a neat little memory test from memtest86.org that boots from a cd), and within a few seconds it started reporting lots of ram errors. I replaced the ram and reloaded the whole system. Looks fine now.....

Here are some of the errors I was getting:

debianKentSarge:/var/lib/dpkg# apt-get install nvidia-glx
Reading Package Lists... Done
Segmentation faulty Tree... 50%

debianKentSarge:/var/lib/dpkg# apt-get remove nvidia-glx
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
nvidia-glx
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 9822kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg received a segmentation fault.

bzhao · 11-22-2011, 10:28 AM

I also met this problem. I resume the available file as the second post. As the status file sound still good so far.
The problem was caused the bad pc in my office. I will memtest to see if it has ram issue.
Thanks for all the posters here!

Cheers!