dpkg: serious warning: file list file for package 'package' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed - can't install any packages

[Florian Diesch]

Ryan Pugatch <rpug at tripadvisor.com> writes:

> Interesting issue.. my machine (thinkpad t61) has had an issue where the 
> file system would randomly become read only.  

That usually caused by a file system error.
Often things like that mean your disc is about to die.

> I think it has something to do with the machine going in to standby..
> it seems to happen shortly after waking up.  Anyway, usually after a
> few times of this happening I have to run fsck and then everything is
> back to normal.  Unfortunately, this time, it appears something was
> really hosed and there were a lot of unattached inodes when I ran
> fsck.  Everything seems fine, though, except for the part where I
> can't install anything with apt.  It seems that dpkg thinks that none
> of my packages are installed.
>
> See: http://paste.ubuntu.com/251393/

That looks quite bad. A lot of the *.list files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/
are missing so the package manager doesn't know anymore which files
belong to which package. 

Most likely there are other files missing or damaged, too.


> Not really sure what to do at this point.  It would be nice to make it 
> work again, otherwise I'll have to reload the machine which I'd like to 
> avoid doing.

I'd reinstall the system, if possible on a new disc (replacing the disc
is quite simple on a Thinkpad).


   Florian
-- 
<http://www.florian-diesch.de/>