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Monday 2 June 2008, 11:05 AM
I broke Debbie and I don't know how to fix her.
Now I've done it. I've been using the update button that opens Synaptic package manager to keep Debbie (my Debian 4.0 Home Server) up to date. I haven't had a problem with her for over a year. But something broke with this last kernel update I think. I can't really tell for sure since she's been trouble free until now.
It happened when Samba tried to update from -9etch to -10etch.
The following message is what I get:
Software index is broken
It is impossible to install or remove any software. Please use the package manager "Synaptic" or run "sudo apt-get install -f" in a terminal to fix this issue at first.
When I attempt to run the apt-get command line listed in the error message above, I get another message after it attempts to upgrade Samba:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be upgraded:
samba
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/3262kB of archives.
After unpacking 139kB of additional disk space will be used
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Pre-configuring packages . . .
Could not exec dpkg!
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (100)
So it looks like its jammed and there is likely some command script file or an executable missing. If I use Synaptic I get the same sort of message and nothing makes much sense.
So what did I screw up? Anybody got an idea?
It happened when Samba tried to update from -9etch to -10etch.
The following message is what I get:
Software index is broken
It is impossible to install or remove any software. Please use the package manager "Synaptic" or run "sudo apt-get install -f" in a terminal to fix this issue at first.
When I attempt to run the apt-get command line listed in the error message above, I get another message after it attempts to upgrade Samba:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be upgraded:
samba
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/3262kB of archives.
After unpacking 139kB of additional disk space will be used
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Pre-configuring packages . . .
Could not exec dpkg!
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (100)
So it looks like its jammed and there is likely some command script file or an executable missing. If I use Synaptic I get the same sort of message and nothing makes much sense.
So what did I screw up? Anybody got an idea?
PreviousComments on this post
Looks like dpkg got confused. About the only thing I can suggest is
dpkg --configure -a
which may return it to sanity. But it's a shot in the dark.
Here's a suggestion that was sent to me about this (with the proviso that you try this at your own risk):
get him to check his disks aren't full
df -h
If no partitions are full, try:
cd /var/cache/apt/archives
sudo rm -rf *
sudo mkdir partial
sudo apt-get update (perhaps 2x)
sudo apt-get upgrade
Karen & Rupert:
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll clone the drives before I try anything so that should keep me at least at the same impasse.
