For those (like me, it is a long story) who want to delay doing a full system update of Buster, I confirm that
apt-get install --reinstall libappstream4 fixed this severe problem in Debian Buster for me. I am surprised this issue migrated from Debian unstable to Buster at all. According to <https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/appstream>, 0.12.2-1 (the version with this severe bug that affects all apt-get updates) was accepted into unstable on 2018-08-04 and only migrated to Buster on 2018-08-15. So there were 11 days when any user that ran "apt-get update" for unstable would have seen the effects of this severe bug. But apparently no report of the issue occurred which means that the whole point of Debian unstable (to winnow out the showstopper bugs before they hit Debian testing = Buster) broke down in this particular case. That said, kudos to Matthias Klumpp for quickly fixing this severe bug once a Debian Buster user had reported it. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________
