apt-get segfault

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, May 31, 2004 at 07:32:40PM -0400, Paul King wrote:
> I am running Debian 3.2, kernel 2.4.18-k7
> 
> I am trying to install an ICQ application. 
> 
> $ sudo apt-get install alicq
> Reading Package Lists... 39%
> 
> Later it says:
> Segmentation faultsts... 39%
> 
> Under /var/lib/apt, I notice a lot of files whose access times are
> recent to the time the command was issued, but with many files that have
> access times that are old. I get the impression that the command failed
> in reading the lists in that directory before the command died.
> 
> The command fails when run as sudo and when run directly as root in a
> console. The stage of "Reading Package Lists" also fails when dselect is
> run.
> 
> Running /usr/bin/stat on the files which show a recent access time show
> that the files have also been modified, and in some cases, changed,
> during the "Reading Package Lists" stage.
> 
> Can anyone give advice here and explain what apt-get is trying to do,
> and how to get out of this "segfault" problem?

Well it is possible that you found a bug in apt-get.  Or your files are
simply corrupt (although it still shouldn't segfault).

Perhaps try making a backup copy of /var/lib/apt/lists and then do,
rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*; apt-get update

If that helps, I would still file a bug report possibly asking if a
copy of the lists that caused the problem would help debug it.

Lennart Sorensen
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