Thanks everyone for your suggestions.
It turns out that some files down there (the list ones)
were corrupted.
Summary:
some list files were corrupted and had to be replaced, but due to them being
needed
by dpkg for any install, manual workaround was needed.
To start with the 'update' file was binary, (as mentioned in first post).
so .. given the list that 'Steve Kowalik' gave me (Thanks Steve) I replaced
the file .. and tried a general apt-get install <package> again.
No go, but helpful, it came up with the same error as before but this time
against package 'ldso'.
So .. I figured .. where there is 2 there is many problems..
So a wuick check revealed another.
# file /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list| grep -v ASCII
/var/lib/dpkg/info/console-tools.list: UTF-8 Unicode text
/var/lib/dpkg/info/emacs20.list: empty
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ldso.list: GNU message catalog
(little endian), revision 0
, 220 messages
I checked out each file above
console-tools looked okay.. (was text and many entries, I could see what was
making file
assume it Unicode (but that's fine by me)
emacs20.list .. left it for now
ldso.list .. yep, sam ad the update.lost - binary.
(this box has 160M HDD so minimum install of everything on it)
I ftp the appropriate deb file back down for ldso (from my local debian.org)
ldso_1.9.11-15_i386.deb
and then go to install it
# dpkg -i ldso_1.9.11-15_i386.deb
Same error ..
(trick it I say) .. I added '/.' to the top of the file (as the other .list
files had this)
And then tried again .. dpkg .. whoala (sp?)
All is well .
Thanks and I hope this helps someone someday.
- ramon
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
> Angus Lees
> Sent: Thursday, 22 August 2002 9:57 PM
> To: ramon buckland
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [SLUG] corrupted dpkg ?
>
>
> At Wed, 21 Aug 2002 22:57:30 +1000, ramon buckland wrote:
> > I got a debian box that, possibly due to harddrive
> > errors, the dpkg no longer installs anything.
>
> [...]
>
> > The error
> > " files list file for package `update' contains empty filename"
> is always the
> > same
> > though.
>
> nasty.
>
> first off, check what state dpkg thinks its in: dpkg -C
>
> if it gives you some advice regarding "update", then follow it.
>
> otherwise, you probably want to reinstall the "update" package. do
> something like "dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/update_*.deb" (or
> redownload the deb if it isn't there anymore)
>
> you may have to force it, but i hope not. see dpkg --force-help (and
> man page).
>
> --
> - Gus
> --
> SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
> More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
>
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/
More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
