Comment 0 for bug 1002535

In bug 1001715 we can see a package installation failure with the message:

 dpkg-deb: error: `/var/cache/apt/archives/openjdk-7-jre-lib_7~u3-2.1.1~pre1-1ubuntu2_all.deb' is not a debian format archive

These should not be reportable as they are indicative a corrupt or faulty package. I've committed a fix for this to apport for Quantal:

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/ubuntu/quantal/apport/ubuntu/revision/1961

However, only 24 of these have been reported so far:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/?field.searchtext=&orderby=-importance&search=Search&field.status%3Alist=NEW&field.status%3Alist=INVALID&field.status%3Alist=CONFIRMED&field.status%3Alist=TRIAGED&field.status%3Alist=INPROGRESS&field.status%3Alist=FIXCOMMITTED&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITH_RESPONSE&field.status%3Alist=INCOMPLETE_WITHOUT_RESPONSE&assignee_option=any&field.assignee=&field.bug_reporter=&field.bug_commenter=&field.subscriber=&field.structural_subscriber=&field.component-empty-marker=1&field.tag=not-debian-format&field.tags_combinator=ANY&field.status_upstream-empty-marker=1&field.has_cve.used=&field.omit_dupes.used=&field.omit_dupes=on&field.affects_me.used=&field.has_no_package.used=&field.has_patch.used=&field.has_branches.used=&field.has_branches=on&field.has_no_branches.used=&field.has_no_branches=on&field.has_blueprints.used=&field.has_blueprints=on&field.has_no_blueprints.used=&field.has_no_blueprints=on

so an SRU may not be worth the work. In the event the we decide it is Steve Langasek came up with the following for recreating the error with a good package:

#!/bin/sh

set -e

for i in "$@"
do
    case $i in
        /var/cache/apt/archives/*.deb)
            cp /bin/bash $i
            ;;
    esac
done

exec /usr/bin/dpkg.real "$@"