Every couple of weeks I run software-updater and sudo-apt-get update ...
upgrade on a group of desktop PC's that I'm keeping alive, just in case.
Today I belatedly discovered that the hard drive on one of them had become so
full that it could not be opened. I found that there was trash to be emptied
as well as an old trisquel ISO image that could be easily replaced, so I
deleted then from that hard drive, releasing nearly 40GB of space. Now it's
mountable & readable again.
The need for this maintenance came about because software-updater could not
complete its task, with the following bleats of
despair:
E: dpkg was interrupted. You must run dpkg --configure -a to correct the
problem.
E: _cache->open failed, please report.
Even after emptying the aforesaid trash, I get the same results.
Worse yet, upon running dpkg --configure -a in Terminal, the terminal begins
its tasks and then crashes. Same result before emptying the trash (and
rebooting) as after emptying the trash and rebooting. Crashes every time.
Never been in this situation before. Apt has always known exactly what to do
to rescue me from my miscues.
Any task that I try with the terminal now is interrupted by the demand that I
run dpkg --configure -a.
BTW, the system has plenty of room; that wasn't what had gotten overfull.
George Langford
