failed to open valid package

[lukaszcz]

This package cannot be opened with gdebi: http://students.mimuw.edu.pl/~lc235951/download/dict2-2.0.0-i386.deb.
The error message is:
Failed to open the software package
The package might be corrupted or you are not allowed to open the file. Check the permissions of the file.

dpkg works perfectly well with it, so I think gdebi should also. A possible reason for reporting this package as corrupt might be that it doesn't list any dependencies, which is a bit odd, but formally valid.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

It seems like the deb file is odd in some way, e.g.:
$ ar p dict2-2.0.0-i386.deb
ar: dict2-2.0.0-i386.deb: Malformed archive

$ ar t dict2-2.0.0-i386.deb
ar: dict2-2.0.0-i386.deb: Malformed archive

In contrast:
$ ar t /var/cache/apt/archives/3dchess_0.8.1-16_amd64.deb
debian-binary
control.tar.gz
data.tar.gz

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Could you please ask the provider of the deb how it was assembled?

[lukaszcz (lukasz-czajka)]

Actually, I am the provider. I created this package quite a lot of time ago. I had neither time nor desire to learn anything about creating debian packages except for the necessary basics. So I did some simplest possible thing. The problem is, I don't remember what it exactly was. I'm afraid I can't provide any further assistance.

Anyway, I just recently rebuilt this package with the same control file, using dpkg -b, and it works. I thought gdebi couldn't handle the lack of dependencies, but now I see that I must've done sth wrong/unusual creating the package. Though neither dpkg nor dpkg-deb ever complained.

[Luca Falavigna (dktrkranz)]

Closing bug as per latest comment, please reopen if you still notice this issue. Thanks!