Ubuntu
dpkg package

  1. Bug #593615
  2. Comment #4

Comment 4 for bug 593615

Revision history for this message
Paul Crawford (psc-sat) wrote :

Today I found I can't install the updates on my 10.04 system and the error given was:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 syntax error: unknown group 'root' in statoverride file

But this is not included in the /var/log/* files and you can't copy & paste from the update manager!

The contents of my file are:

root mlocate 2755 /usr/bin/mlocate
root root 4755 /sbin/unix_chkpwd
hplip root 755 /var/run/hplip

I have seen a thread about hplib and a similar error message (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186487) from 2006 but why is it still happening 4 years later!?

The suggestion there is to remove by the command:

dpkg-statoverride --remove /var/run/hplip

But guess what? It gives the same error message:

dpkg-statoverrides: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 syntax error: unknown group 'root' in statoverride file

This is a serious error as it is preventing security related updates from being installed, and the average user should simply NOT have this sort of thing to deal with.