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

[Florian Diesch]

Andrew Farris <flyindragon1 at aol.com> writes:

> On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 10:45 -0400, Ryan Pugatch wrote:
>> 
>> Florian Diesch wrote:
>> > 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
>> 
>> Thanks for your advice.  If I need to reinstall, I had planned on using 
>> a new disk just in case.  But I don't think that the disk is bad.  The 
>> FS would only go read only when I'm working mobile and having put the 
>> machine in standby.  Something definitely would get corrupted when it 
>> would happen.  Is there no magic way to regenerate the *.list files? 
>> Heh, I'm more of a yum/rpm guy so I'm not as knowledgeable about apt/dpkg.
>> 
>
> Have you tried doing a "sudo apt-get update"?  As far as I know, that
> should update the list files.  

That regenerates the package list, but not the *.list files of the
installed packages.



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