[plug] broken ubuntu package manager

[Adam Hewitt]

On 12/12/2006, at 8:48 AM, Tomasz Grzegurzko wrote:

> 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
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> PLUG discussion list: plug at plug.org.au
>> http://www.plug.org.au/mailman/listinfo/plug
>> Committee e-mail: committee at plug.linux.org.au
>>
> 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.
>

Or possibly you have run out of disk space?

Adam.