On 6 March 2011 17:47, John MM <[email protected]> wrote: > > And this is supposed to help me now how? You gave me an instruction then > dissappeared, and it looks to me that you werent even going to help, your > just pointing out what you do to the OP. Thanks I really appreciate you > leaving me in lurch. I would suggest that unless you are prepared to give > help if something goes wrong, dont. It doesnt help. It causes huge amounts > of stress. Thank you I really appreciate, I was on the verge of almost > having to do a fresh install, because of you. Way to go. >
First, chill. Second, I was replying to Grant. Third, I assumed that you had a basic knowledge of how Ubuntu works. If you need immediate help you should use IRC; email by its very nature is non-realtime. If you must know I was washing my car after lunch while it was sunny. If you look at the errors you are getting it clearly shows you have errors in the dpkg database. You either have, or at some point had, a sources.list entry for an old version of VirtualBox. This could be in a couple of places, either as an entry in /etc/apt/sources.list or in a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ - only you will be able to find it. If you have removed the entry then a $ sudo aptitude update should have updated the package lists and removed references to the old files - I assumed you had already done this and so moved on to the next (rather more drastic) step. This I have used several times previously to recover inconsistencies in dpkg, for example after an unexpected shutdown. It's not nice, as I have to reinstall my packages again, but the system stays running (and $ sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop pulls in most packages anyway, the others can be pulled by a script by looking at /usr/share/doc). The problem with manually clearing /var/lib/dpkg is that the errors it generates look scary, and trying to fix this via email (which is slow) is less than ideal. Again, IRC would be better. However, seeing as the error first showed in /var/lib/dpkg/status, removing it will narrow down the error again. As you've posted already, /var/lib/dpkg/available also shows the same error - again pointing to a problem with the dpkg databases. My suggestion is as follows - but please don't try this, as I fear it will make you angry. $ sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/status-old /var/lib/dpkg/status $ sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/available-old /var/lib/dpkg/available $ gksudo gedit /var/lib/dpkg/status or $ sudo nano /var/lib/dpkg/status Find lines 46354 and 48216 and delete or edit the lines referencing virtualbox. Do the same for /var/lib/dpkg/available. Otherwise, look at the script here: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/package-database-rebuild.html > I was on the verge of almost having to do a fresh install Tsk. The internet, eh? Maybe you should stop relying on the kindness of strangers and pay someone for professional support? > because of you Your install was borked long before me, matey. Most people would have done a quick backup and reinstalled long ago, or even done a Google search for "/var/lib/dpkg/status" which points to solved threads on ubuntuforums, but I guess it's a better idea to get annoyed with the internet. Jonathon -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
