Hi, after a lot of frustration, it turned out I had a corrupted file system which xfs tools wouldn't fix, and only just yesterday evening managed to recover my data. after that, I was able to dist-upgrade and everything worked just fine.
thus many apologies for raising a bug which wasn't a bug at all. I've not seen the "structure needs cleaning" error before and didn't realise it was a file system problem rather than a package problem. regards Paul ** Changed in: python-cryptography (Ubuntu) Status: Incomplete => Invalid -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1853023 Title: package python-cryptography 1.2.3-1ubuntu0.2 failed to install/upgrade: unable to stat './usr/lib/python2.7/dist- packages/cryptography/hazmat/primitives/asymmetric/__init__.py' (which I was about to install): Structure needs cleaning To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/python-cryptography/+bug/1853023/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs