Comment 3 for bug 629112

I've got a similar error. Mine says ".../index.3/spelling.baseA" instead.

I do have a /var/lib/apt-xapian-index/index.2/ folder, but no .../index.3/ folder.

An "ls -l /var/cache/" says:

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2011-10-09 07:42 apt-xapian-index

which means the process needs to be run by root. As far as I know that would be the case so I'm not too sure why a mkdir() would fail here.

Just in case I tried to run the script manually and go no output what so ever:

root@my-server:~# /etc/cron.weekly/apt-xapian-index
root@my-server:~#

Not only that, the index.3 folder was not created.