[Bug 916799] Re: Blank line in previously installed packagedescription causes 12.04 upgrade failure

[Greg]

I ran into the same problem, and I'm NOT doing a dist-upgrade, just a
routine update of packages.

I'm getting the blank line error for the package XMind.  I solved the
problem by deleting the offending lines and applying the package
updates.  I agree that using an empty line as a record separator seems
easy to run afoul of, so at a minimum the regex / parser of the file
should be more capable at identifying a record

dpkg-query: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 30690 package 'xmind':
 blank line in value of field 'Description'
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 30690 package 'xmind':
 blank line in value of field 'Description'
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 30690 package 'xmind':
 blank line in value of field 'Description'

Using vi, I editted /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/available to
delete the offending blank line, marked for illustration purposes below
with the text [[ ***DELETE ME ..... I AM A BLANK LINE IN THE
DESCRIPTION*** ]]

Package: xmind
Priority: optional
Section: multiverse/text
Installed-Size: 43096
Maintainer: xmind <dev at xmind.net>
Architecture: i386
Version: 3.0.3.200904291819
Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.8.0), openjdk-6-jre | sun-java5-jre | sun-java6-jre
Size: 37004904
Description: XMind - Brainstorming and Mind Mapping
 XMind, is an open source brainstorming and mind mapping software tool
 developed by XMind Ltd. It helps people to capture ideas, organize to
 various charts, and share them for collaboration. Supporting mind maps,
 fishbone diagrams, tree diagrams, org-charts, logic charts, and even
 spreadsheets. Often used for knowledge management, meeting minutes,
 task management, and GTD. XMind is compatible with Freemind/Mindmanager.
          [[ ***DELETE ME ..... I AM A BLANK LINE IN THE DESCRIPTION*** ]]
 XMind is dual licensed under 2 open source licenses: the Eclipse Public
 License v1.0 (EPL) and the GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPL).
          [[*** THIS IS AN EXPECTED BLANK LINE BETWEEN PACKAGES ***]]
Package: libcap2-bin

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/916799

Title:
  Blank line in previously installed packagedescription causes 12.04
  upgrade failure

Status in dpkg:
  New
Status in “dpkg” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  While attempting to upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 the version of dpkg
  used by Ubuntu was upgraded.  The new version was unable to parse my
  /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/available files.  Under 11.10,
  I had installed a package from Lexmark for a printer driver that had a
  blank line in the package description field.  The old version of dpkg
  was apparently able to parse the file with the blank line.  However,
  when the new version encountered the files.  any further package
  updates failed and the update process proceeded to the cleanup/reboot
  phase.

  My system was usable following the reboot, and I was able to find the
  blank lines and manually edit them to allow dpkg to start working
  again.  There were some broken packages as a result of the failed
  upgrade.  I was able to fix them using apt-get install -f.  I was then
  able to complete the upgrade with an apt-get dist-upgrade.

  There may need to be some checks added to the upgrade procedure to
  prevent upgrade failures when a package description has a blank line.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: dpkg 1.16.1.2ubuntu5
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-8.15-generic 3.2.0
  Uname: Linux 3.2.0-8-generic i686
  ApportVersion: 1.90-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: i386
  CheckboxSubmission: 21a3f7508cdc22a53dbe8d10fbb1ff75
  CheckboxSystem: 9c26adf6eed2f681ba41f94dd24c07e4
  Date: Sun Jan 15 08:53:36 2012
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Netbook 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100318)
  SourcePackage: dpkg
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-01-15 (0 days ago)

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