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Xwindowsjunkie

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Home Server Projects

I've always been interested in servers for home use. Since all entertainment media has gone digital, there is an unprecedented opportunity to make your custom “dream” entertainment center real for very little outlay. It is only a matter of time until home entertainment servers become 21st century “white goods”.

Monday 2 June 2008, 11:05 AM

I broke Debbie and I don't know how to fix her.

Posted by Xwindowsjunkie

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?


Comments on this post

Rupert Goodwins

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.

Posted by Rupert Goodwins on Jun 2, 2008 12:13 PM

Karen Friar

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


Posted by Karen Friar on Jun 2, 2008 2:10 PM

Xwindowsjunkie

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.

Posted by Xwindowsjunkie on Jun 3, 2008 4:15 AM

Xwindowsjunkie

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  • Xwindowsjunkie
  • Hardware Design/Engineering, Houston, TX
  • Member since: May 2007

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