Hi,
If you don't mind getting your hands dirty...
On Thu, 8 Feb 2001, Eric Cheng wrote:
> Perhaps after an abnormal shutdown the files list file of dpkg was
> damaged. Now I cannot dpkg -i or apt-get install anything. It complained
> about "dpkg: error processing <the package I was trying to install> :
> files list file for package `libgnome-pilot0' is missing final newline". I
> tried to remove this and its dependencies, but it could not remove them.
> Now dpkg is completely broken. Is there any means that I can do to repair
> or recover the files list file?
If that is all that is wrong, add a final newline to
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libgnome-pilot0.list
If the install of a package is severely messed up:
1) remove any files listed in /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.list that
do not belong to any other package (use "dpkg -S <filename>" if
you can, "grep <filename> *.list" otherwise).
2) look at the /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.{pre,post}rm scripts to
see what specials need to be done
3) do "rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.*"
4) edit the packages entries from /var/lib/dpkg/{available,status}
it will be like dpkg never installed it.
If you think the files list file is truncated you can use
"ar -x <package>*.deb" on the .deb to get at the data tarball, which
will let you see what was placed on the file system.
Maybe you can get away with fixing the list file, doing "dpkg --purge
<package>", and manually removing any files not in the list file.
HTH
- Bruce
