The package cache file is corrupted

[Dereck Wonnacott]

Binary package hint: synaptic

E: The package cache file is corrupted
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

I was checking for updates when this little treat greeted me this morning. I'm not too sure what log files would be useful, so do ask for them.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/sbin/synaptic
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: synaptic 0.62.1ubuntu10
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: synaptic
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic x86_64

[Augusto Cezar Amaral (acacs)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please run:

$ apt-config dump | grep Update

Also, could you please check if you have "packagekit" installed?

Thanks in advance.

[Rob (rob-drrob1)]

I am getting this error on Ubuntu 8.10, and I do not have packagekit installed.

[Treris (treris)]

I am getting this error on the Kubuntu Jaunty beta, with packagekit installed. I've noticed that it occurs only when downloading the package information from the various repositories takes a long time.
While downloading that information the update manager usually comes up with a notification that updates are available. I can't reproduce the error in any easy way, but it has happened about 3 or 4 times since freshly installing kubuntu jaunty beta on Sunday.
I use synaptic because it gives me more options and more information about packages than kpackagekit.
I also have a laptop running intrepid with the experimental kde4 packages from the kubuntu experimental ppa (so it's also running kde 4.2.1). This laptop does not have packagekit installed and I have not seen this error on it yet.

Perhaps I'll try disabling the automatic update function and see if that makes a difference, or otherwise uninstall kpackagekit to see if that makes a difference.

[Yannis Tsop (ogiannhs)]

I have left synaptic open (at this dialog) so in the next 12-15 hours tell me if you need any file to upload.

I have Jaunty installed and I get this error many times for some days now.

[Treris (treris)]

I have removed (k)packagekit from my jaunty computer and have just now seen a situation that would have otherwise resulted in the synaptic error message (slow loading of some repositories) pass without error whatsoever.
Therefore I'm going to leave (k)packagekit uninstalled and see what happens.

Can someone confirm this workaround?

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

@Treris: yes, it seems to work.

@all: Please add any new comments to bug 257639. I have marked this a duplicate of 257639.