package libicu40 (not installed) failed to install/upgrade:

[gasp]

Trying to upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic and got this error.
Bummer really as I dont even use ICU and now I am afraid that the whole upgrade will be terminated.
Other similar bug reports say that the upgrade with ICU has been fixed but it still has happened with me.
One poster said that the problem is transient and that you should do the following in a terminal:
$ sudo apt-get clean
and then try the upgrade again.
So I will give that a go and report back if it does not work.

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Dec 6 11:37:43 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ErrorMessage:
 ErrorMessage: no package named `libicu40' is installed, cannot configure
Package: libicu40 (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.28-14.47-generic
SourcePackage: icu
Title: package libicu40 (not installed) failed to install/upgrade:
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-14-generic i686

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for your report

The relevant message:
Unpacking libicu40 (from .../libicu40_4.0.1-2ubuntu2_i386.deb) ..
dpkg-deb (subprocess): error in buffer_read(stream): failed to write to pipe in copy: Input/output error
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste returned error exit status 2

This is due to a corrupted archive. Cleaning the cache then updating it will fix it. If so please set the bug's status to Invalid. Thanks in advance!