nvidia-common package problem

Giles Orr gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Sat May 14 19:26:12 UTC 2011


On 9 May 2011 12:16, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Sun, May 08, 2011 at 07:33:09AM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
>> I'm running Debian amd64 testing on a Core 2 system with an Nvidia
>> GeForce 8400 GS video card.  I'm using the nvidia proprietary driver
>> (although switching to the nouveau driver is looking like a better and
>> better idea ... does it do dual head?).  Whenever I try to do a system
>> upgrade ("aptitude update ; aptitude full-upgrade") it hangs on the
>> nvidia-common package, as below:
>>
>> # aptitude install nvidia-common
>> The following packages will be upgraded:
>>   nvidia-common
>> 1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 352 not upgraded.
>> Need to get 13.3 kB of archives. After unpacking 12.3 kB will be used.
>> Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
>> Get:1 ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/contrib nvidia-common
>> amd64 20110426+1 [13.3 kB]
>> Fetched 13.3 kB in 0s (19.4 kB/s)
>> Preconfiguring packages ...
>> dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 12505
>> package 'nvidiabinaryblob':
>>  error in Version string 'pkg2-1': version number does not start with digit
>
> Somehow you have got a corruption in the dpkg available file.  If you open
> it, and delete the package around line 12505 it should be happy again.  Save a backup first.
>
>> (Reading database ... 196539 files and directories currently installed.)
>> Preparing to replace nvidia-common 20110213+1 (using
>> .../nvidia-common_20110426+1_amd64.deb) ...
>> Unpacking replacement nvidia-common ...
>> Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
>> dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
>>  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
>> configured to not write apport reports
>>                                       Errors were encountered while processing:
>>  nvidia-common
>> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
>> A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
>> Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
>> dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
>>  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
>> Errors were encountered while processing:
>>  nvidia-common
>>
>>
>> I tried again:
>>
>>
>> # aptitude install nvidia-common
>> The following partially installed packages will be configured:
>>   nvidia-common
>> No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
>> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 352 not upgraded.
>> Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
>> Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
>> dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
>>  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
>> configured to not write apport reports
>>                                       Errors were encountered while processing:
>>  nvidia-common
>> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
>> A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
>> Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
>> dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
>>  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
>> Errors were encountered while processing:
>>  nvidia-common
>>
>>
>> Since this is failing, any number of other packages are refusing to
>> install as well because aptitude insists on attempting to install
>> nvidia-common first.  Also, several packages that require
>> nvidia-specific drivers ("hugin" and "k3b" at least) are currently
>> failing to work.  I rely on both these programs, so suggestions would
>> be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.
>
> The problem is the dpkg available file has a syntax error, so now dpkg
> won't do some things.

I tried deleting just the lines related to nvidia-common in the
available file, but that didn't fix it.  So I purged nvidia-common and
deleted the available file entirely, but that made dpkg unhappy.  So I
ran "dpkg --clear-avail" and ran "aptitude update ; aptitude
full-upgrade".  Somewhere in the mess of output, I got this:

Setting up nvidia-common (20110426+1) ...
dpkg: error processing nvidia-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 30
configured to not write apport reports
                                      Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:

And afterward it said:

Current status: 504 updates [-115], 30537 new [-1].

I'm really stumped as to what to do at this point.  Any further suggestions?

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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