[plug] broken ubuntu package manager

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

On 12/12/06, Sol Hanna <sol.hanna at three.com.au> wrote:
> hi all,
>
> I was just installing some web packages on one of my pcs (Ubuntu Edgy
> Eft on x86/32) and the package manager broke. :( The error code I got
> was:
>
> ---
> Preconfiguring packages ...
> (Reading database ... dpkg: error processing edubuntu-desktop (--purge):
> unable to open files list file for package `openoffice.org-evolution':
> Input/output error
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  edubuntu-desktop
> ---
>
> ...and so on. Now I did 'apt-get --purge' for the above mentioned
> packages and now when I 'dpkg -l' for either of them I get the code 'pi'
> meaning that they're purged. 'dselect' confirms this.
>
> But I'm still getting this error. In the meanwhile there are a bunch of
> packages that won't install and the red-carpet updater thingy won't work
> either. (On that note, I should point out that 'tar' won't update, but
> the previous version is installed and working.)
>
> Any ideas?
>
> thanks; sol
>
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>
This sounds to me like either filesystem errors (in which case, fsck)
or HDD errors. I'd only expect IO errors like what you've seen under
these circumstances.

Tomasz