dpkg parse error caused by virtual box entry

[Conor Curran]

Binary package hint: dpkg

When doing a dist-upgrade this morning I encountered a dpkg parse error due to the virtual box entry.

the trace from sudo apt-get dist-upgrade was

Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 52358 package 'virtualbox-3.1':
 error in Version string `3.1.2-56127_Ubuntu_karmic': invalid character in revision number

To work around this I had to edit /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/available and replace "3.1.2-56127_Ubuntu_karmic" with "3.1.2-56127ubuntukarmic"

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks Conor, I'm subscribing Colin to the bug since the worked on the recent update

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

This was introduced by the following change in dpkg 1.15.8
 * Check version syntax when parsing it from libdpkg based programs.
    Closes: #574704

git commit: http://git.debian.org/?p=dpkg/dpkg.git;a=commitdiff;h=662d979

setting to triaged / high

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Fixed in dpkg 1.15.8.4ubuntu1, just uploaded.

dpkg (1.15.8.4) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Guillem Jover ]
  [...]
  * On database parsing only warn on bogus versions previously accepted,
    the other instances will keep producing errors, to avoid newly
    introduced bogosity. Closes: #590885, #590896, #591692, #591885