[ALUG] Ubuntu 7.04 apt-get error when installing packages

[sagr]

On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 12:21 +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 10:06 +0100, MJ Ray wrote: 
> > Probably /var/lib/dpkg/info/xcalc.list

Thanks MJR, yes, it is there.

> > Did your /var get full while installing something?  I'd suggest
> > reinstalling xcalc at least.

Yes, now you mention it, I think there was an error come up about xcalc
during installation, but, not understanding what it meant I just clicked
on the ok button.

> I think you will get this error when you try to install anything,
> including trying to reinstall xcalc.

Yes, all apt-get actions seem to fail.

>  Best course of action here would be
> to replace xcalc.list with a known good copy (which I have just emailed
> to you off list) or at least compare to your copy and make changes as
> appropriate.
> 
> Then I would do a 'sudo apt-get install --reinstall xcalc' just to be
> sure.

Thanks; I have received and installed your new file and then done an
apt-get reinstall. This seemed to work ok but now when I try to apt-get
install gramps I get a similar error message as before but this time
mentioning a different file is missing it's newline:

(Reading database ... dpkg: error
processing /var/cache/apt/archives/gramps_2.2.6-1ubuntu1_all.deb
(--unpack):
 files list file for package `xcursor-themes' is missing final newline
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/gramps_2.2.6-1ubuntu1_all.deb
Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

> It's either as MJR says, or a disk/filesystem error or the machine was
> rebooted whilst it was still installing the ubuntu packages or possibly
> during an update.

I am wondering if it was simply my /var filesystem got full up during
installation like MJR suggested (the hard disk I have installed it on is
quite small (the / partition is only 3GB)).

When doing a "ls" on /var/lib/dpkg/info to look for the xcalc.list file
a few minutes ago I noticed that quite a few files were listed in green
instead of black.  It appears that these green files are set to
permission 755 instead of the normal 644 and are mostly (but not all as
some are just .prerm) in sets of four with:

.postinst
.postrm
.preinst
.prerm

suffixes instead of sets of two with:

.list
.md5sums

suffixes.  The question is what to do now.  My PC starts and runs ok,
and, indeed, if I had not tried to do an apt-get I would be completely
unaware anything is wrong.  Unfortunately this PC is rather slow
(300MHz) with only 128MB RAM and took ages (nearly 4 hours?) to install
Ubuntu and I have been happily typing away extensively personalising it
since then.  I am therefore a bit reluctant to reinstall everything from
scratch.  I have saved a list of files with the *.p* suffix to a text
file but looking at the list can see it contains 392 lines... NOT good
news.

I have noticed that Ubuntu keeps telling me there are around 300
packages waiting to be updated online each time it starts up... I have
not tried this online update, and haven't got a clue whether or not it
would work, but would it be worth a try or would it complicate things?
Alternatively I still have the Ubuntu 7.04 "Live CD" from which I
originally installed Ubuntu... can I simply copy any files off there
onto my hard disk to correct the problem?

Although having a little bit of experience with Linux I haven't much of
a clue about Debian/Ubuntu so am unsure of how serious my problem is.

Any suggestions about the best way forward would be appreciated.

sagr.