On Sat, 2009-01-17 at 21:33 +0100, Eric Higgins wrote:
>
> # apt-get upgrade
...
> Preconfiguring packages ...
> (Reading database ... dpkg: error processing
> /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_arm.deb (--unpack):
> files list file for package `coreutils' contains empty filename
> Errors were encountered while processing:
> /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_arm.deb
> Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Try to remove
/var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_arm.deb

and try again with:
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade

Best,

Rob


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On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 04:35:37PM -0800, Eric Higgins <erichiggins@gmail.com> was heard to say:
> Still no luck on this. I can't even seem to force dpkg to upgrade:
>
> # apt-get -fm install dpkg
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree... Done
> Suggested packages:
> lzma
> The following packages will be upgraded:
> dpkg
> 1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 59 not upgraded.
> Need to get 0B/2039kB of archives.
> After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
> (Reading database ... dpkg: error processing
> /var/cache/apt/archives/dpkg_1.13.26_arm.deb (--unpack):
> files list file for package `coreutils' contains empty filename

Do you see anything unusual in the file list for coreutils? (i.e.,
/var/lib/dpkg/info/coreutils.list) For instance, are there empty lines?
Does it look obviously corrupted?

I would try "fixing" the problems that stop dpkg from processing the
files list, then downloading the .deb for the *exact version* you have
installed, and running "dpkg --install" on it to make sure the list is
correct. NB: make sure it doesn't have anything that belongs to another
package first!

I've attached the files list for coreutils on my computer for
comparison.

Daniel

On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 07:37:29PM -0800, Eric Higgins <erichiggins@gmail.com> was heard to say:
> Ah ha, now we are getting somewhere:
>
> It looks like the coreutils.list file has a script instead of a
> filelist. How do I go about fixing this for my system?

It looks like it got replaced by the postinst for wamerican. You
could just replace it with an empty file and then reinstall coreutils,
but you should be aware that this is probably some sort of filesystem
corruption. It's possible that this is the only thing that's wrong
and that you won't see any more problems, but I wouldn't count on it.
It's probably a good idea to back up any important data just in case
the situation gets worse.

Just out of curiosity: what happened to the postinst for wamerican?
It should be /var/lib/dpkg/info/wamerican.postinst.

Daniel


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