I have no idea why the little icon appeared to me, on my Karmic live-cd. But just after it crashed, I decided to try and run this same command using sudo, and it seems like it worked:
ubu...@ubuntu:~$ sudo update-apt-xapian-index Rebuilding Xapian index: done. -- update-apt-xapian-index crashed with OSError in getmtime() https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/267330 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
