Package: dpkg Version: N/A; reported 2003-04-27 Severity: important If you install a .deb that has a control file that is missing the Maintainer field, dpkg will corrupt the status file.
You will get the error: Reading Package Lists... Error! W: Encountered status field in a non-version description E: Encountered a section with no Package: header E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. A diff between status and status-old found: Status:.... Priority:.... Section:.... Maintainer: -1), libfreetype6, libgal19 (>= 0.19), libgdk-pixbuf-gnome2 (>= 0.16.0-1), libgdk-pixbuf2 (>= 0.16.0-1), libghttp1 (>= ...........lots of junk........... Version:..... In other words: It was putting random text into the Maintainer field. The .deb was missing the Maintainer field - it did get a warning about it when building, but dpkg should not corrupt status if that happens. -- System Information Debian Release: 3.0 Architecture: i386 Kernel: Linux blueberry 2.4.19 #10 Fri Dec 13 01:56:53 EST 2002 i686 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
