[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > While I'm waiting for someone to *fix* bug 405506, does anyone have an > idea how to recover from it? Is a reinstall in order? > > Yesterday aptitude reported > Unable to parse package file /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates > This happened on an etch that was just installed the same day from a > previous-day netinstall daily build. > > The file does exist, and appears to be binary gibberish.
In the bug report, you say: | tried startx, got the black screen of death -- completely unresponsive | to mouse or keyboard. Hard rebooting a wedged system can result in corrupted files in rare cases, and it sounds like this is what you have. The pkgstates file is a plain text file. The chances of this being an aptitude bug seem very near to zero. Unless you or someone else can reproduce the bug (either the hang starting X or the file system corruption), it's certianly not grave severity. > There's also a pkgstates.old file, about one minute older, in the same > directory. Should I try replacing pkgstates by pkgstates.old in the > hope that will help? Depends, is it also full of binary garbage? Have you checked the rest of your files BTW? -- see shy jo
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