Package manager crashed

Bug #244717 reported by Andrew Allcock
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
apt (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Michael Vogt

Bug Description

Binary package hint: update-manager

Heron

An unresolvable problem occurred while initialising the package information.

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the following error message:

'E:Problem parsing dependency Depends, E:Error occurred while processing firestarter (NewVersion1), E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'

Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks for your bugreport.

This looks like your /var/lib/dpkg/status file got corrupted somehow, please attach it to this bugreport. Problems like this in the dpkg status file are often caused by faulty hardware, could you please run a memory test and a file system check?

Thanks,
 Michael

Changed in update-manager:
assignee: nobody → mvo
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Andrew Allcock (cloggsy) wrote : Re: [Bug 244717] Re: Package manager crashed
  • status Edit (1.3 MiB, text/plain; name=status; charset=utf-8)
  • status-old Edit (1.3 MiB, text/plain; name=status-old; charset=utf-8)

Many thanks for your reply - I think I've attached the file you need.

Please excuse the fact that you're speaking to a Linux/Ubuntu novice so
you'll need to tell me how to do the tests you recommend.

Regards

Andrew Allcock

On Wed, 2008-07-02 at 10:25 +0000, Michael Vogt wrote:
> Thanks for your bugreport.
>
> This looks like your /var/lib/dpkg/status file got corrupted somehow,
> please attach it to this bugreport. Problems like this in the dpkg
> status file are often caused by faulty hardware, could you please run a
> memory test and a file system check?
>
> Thanks,
> Michael
>
> ** Changed in: apt (Ubuntu)
> Sourcepackagename: update-manager => apt
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Michael Vogt (mvo)
> Status: New => Incomplete
>

Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

The following entry in the status file seems to be corrupt:
"""
 libgnomeui-0 ,>= 2.17.1),
"""
In line 1724. Instead of a "," a "(" is expected here.

The binary representation of the "(" and the "," are here:
   00101000 ( (left/open parenthesis)
   00101100 , (comma)

As you can see, there is only a one-bit difference so I its quite likey that a bit flip error happend while writing this to disk. You can the your RAM by pressing ESC early in the boot process when there is this 3 sec timeout (it reads "GRUB loading") and select memtest 86+ there as the menu option.

Good luck,
 Michael

Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

Hello Andrew, are you still facing this issue? did you tried what Michael said in previous comment?

Revision history for this message
Andrew Allcock (cloggsy) wrote :

Michael's hunch that this was related to a hardware issue seemed to be correct. Before I was able to continue with testing the RAM the machine died and had to be sent back to the manufacturer. When I got it back I reloaded Heron with no problems. Now on a different machine using Ibex. Sorry if I left the bug report in some sort of queue without resolving it.

Revision history for this message
Victor Vargas (kamus) wrote :

According to last comment I will close this report.

Changed in apt (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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