On 6 Jun 2001, Daniel Wagner wrote:
> since yesterday i've a strange problem with dselect. i tried to look
> for new packages at the mirror ( i use sid ), and did a update in
> dselect, everything seemed to work, but at the end of operation the
> following errormessage came.
>
> |Reading Package Lists... Done
> |Building Dependency Tree... Done
> |Merging Available information
> |Replacing available packages info, using /var/cache/apt/available.
> |dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/cache/apt/available' near line 1020 package
> `blt':
> | `Replaces' field, reference to `blt-dev': error in version: version string
> has embedded spaces
There are two or three instances of this in the blt and blt-demo
packages; it looks like:
(<< 2.4i-1 ) s/b (<< 2.4i-1)
or with "j" instead of "i".
> |
> |update available list script returned error exit status 2.
> |Press <enter> to continue.
>
> any suggestions what to do. i tried already to remove the available
> list to enforce the rebuild of it, but this didn't work.
There is probably a better way to do this...
/var/cache/apt/available is built from the stuff in
/var/lib/apt/lists, which is where the problem lies (in the file(s)
for the "main" distribution).
If you try to edit /var/cache/apt/available and rerun `update' your
fixes get over written when the available file is built.
If you edit the files in /var/lib/apt/lists to fix the problem (in the
entries for the blt and blt-demo packages), apt notices that you don't
have the same as what is in the remote archive and fetches the files
again -- first downloading them into /var/lib/apt/lists/partial.
If you interrupt the connection, apt will abandon the stuff in the
"partial" directory and rebuilt the available file from what it has in
"lists" (the `using old packages lists' message).
So...
do the edits in /var/lib/apt/lists,
restart the update then interrupt it,
wait for apt/dselect to timeout (ignore the error message),
choose "select"
...all should be well (until next time, maybe).
HTH
- Bruce
