On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 07:12:02AM -0800, Daniel Burrows wrote: > On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 12:27:44PM +0000, Julian Gilbey <j...@debian.org> was > heard to say: > > I've upped the severity of this one to "important". Sometimes, and I > > can't pin down when or why, either aptitude, apt or possibly dpkg > > leaves the /var/lib/dpkg/available file in a broken state. After > > this, dpkg refuses to function, and the only way of fixing it that I > > have found is to run "dselect update". It would make sense if > > aptitude/apt-get update were to always fully update the > > /var/lib/dpkg/available file to avoid this potential problem. > > aptitude never touches /var/lib/dpkg/available, and neither does > apt-get (which is what this bug is about, not that it touches the > file wrongly). apt-cache can print an "available" file to stdout, but > it doesn't replace the dselect one. Your problem is somewhere else. > > Do you perhaps have a cron job that tries to update the available > file?
First, thanks for such a speedy response! That's bizarre. I don't believe I have such a cron job that I've written myself. # ls /etc/cron.* /etc/cron.d: anacron postgresql-common svn-autoreleasedeb anacron.dpkg-dist postgresql-common~ vpnc php5 postgresql-common.dpkg-old /etc/cron.daily: 0anacron bsdmainutils locate popularity-contest standard apache2 chkrootkit logrotate rkhunter svnbackup apt dlocate man-db samba sysklogd aptitude exim4-base mlocate spamassassin tetex-bin automysqlbackup htdig ntp spamassassin.dpkg-old /etc/cron.hourly: /etc/cron.monthly: 0anacron scrollkeeper standard /etc/cron.weekly: 0anacron cvs dhelp~ man-db sysklogd auctex dhelp dhelp.dpkg-old rkhunter Then there is the update-notifier package, which seems to run under gnome, even though I don't have a cron job for it. Then there's this: burnside:~ # ls /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ 01autoremove 20archive 90rkhunter 10periodic 50unattended-upgrades 99-localepurge 15update-stamp 70debconf 99update-notifier I don't know if any of these would be of significance? So then at the moment, I have no idea what is messing around with the available file :=/ Julian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
