A few days I started seeing the following during an 'aptitude safe-upgrade' on my Debian/squeeze system:
Setting up python-central (0.6.16+nmu1) ... pycentral: pycentral cleanup-pkgprepare-updates: found 37 dangling symlinks pycentral: pycentral cleanup-pkgprepare-updates: checking for links owned by packages (this may take some time) warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 5913 package 'dist': missing description Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/pycentral", line 2335, in <module> main() File "/usr/bin/pycentral", line 2329, in main rv = action.run(global_options) File "/usr/bin/pycentral", line 1902, in run packaged = self.links_in_packages(dangling) File "/usr/bin/pycentral", line 2005, in links_in_packages self.locate(arg_list, cmd_list) File "/usr/bin/pycentral", line 1974, in locate fn = line.split(':', 1)[1][1:-11] IndexError: list index out of range dpkg: error processing python-central (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: python-central Which would seem to be another instance of this bug. However the workaround posted above doesn't appear to work: if chunk_max == -1: chunk_max = 16384 (error with 'if chunk_max = -1: chunk_max = 16384') doesn't prevent the error. Indeed if I put: self.warn('chunk_max: %d' % chunk_max) as line 1982 (just after the SC_ARG_MAX if/else) I get: pycentral: pycentral cleanup-pkgprepare-updates: chunk_max: 2097152 Putting that warn() after the reduce() call gives: pycentral: pycentral cleanup-pkgprepare-updates: chunk_max: 2095312 Aha! Putting a warn() to show the value of 'line' at line 1973 shows: pycentral: pycentral cleanup-pkgprepare-updates: Line: missing description So in fact although perhaps python-central should be more robust this is actually happening because of how dpkg now moans if any package doesn't have a Description field. Adding a second test: if line == 'missing description': continue after the: if line == '': continue allows python-central to complete properly. -- - Athanasius = Athanasius(at)miggy.org / http://www.miggy.org/ Finger athan(at)fysh.org for PGP key "And it's me who is my enemy. Me who beats me up. Me who makes the monsters. Me who strips my confidence." Paula Cole - ME
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