updating doesn't work anymore

[Markus Schönhaber]

20.05.2010 23:22, Joep L. Blom:

> Markus Schönhaber wrote:

>> What exactly did you do? And is this really the only message you get?
>>
>> The following works for me:
>>
>> /var/lib/dpkg/info# mv -v libc-bin.triggers libc-bin.triggers.old
>> `libc-bin.triggers' -> `libc-bin.triggers.old'
>> /var/lib/dpkg/info# aptitude reinstall libc-bin
[...]
>>
>> /var/lib/dpkg/info# ls -l libc-bin*
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   70 2010-01-03 13:03 libc-bin.conffiles
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1287 2010-05-20 15:08 libc-bin.list
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2200 2010-01-03 13:03 libc-bin.md5sums
>> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  174 2010-01-03 13:03 libc-bin.postinst
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   18 2010-01-03 13:02 libc-bin.triggers
>> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root   18 2010-01-03 13:02 libc-bin.triggers.old
>> /var/lib/dpkg/info#

> I did exactly what you did except for the line:
> "`libc-bin.triggers' -> `libc-bin.triggers.old'"
> 
> My lines are:
> =================================================
> $ sudo apt-get  --reinstall install libc-bin
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 15 not 
> upgraded.
> 1 not fully installed or removed.
> After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
> Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
> Setting up libc-bin (2.10.1-0ubuntu16) ...
> dpkg (subprocess): unable to execute installed post-installation script: 
> Exec format error
> dpkg: error processing libc-bin (--configure):
>   subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>   libc-bin
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> ===========================================================

To me, that seems to indicate that removing libc-bin.triggers did indeed
help - it didn't fully solve your problem, though.
As I read the error message, the post-installation script
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libc-bin.postinst
is broken too.
What I'd try is to move all the
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libc-bin*
files out of the way - for example by doing
rename 's,(.*),$1.bak,' /var/lib/dpkg/info/libc-bin.*
and re-install libc-bin.

-- 
Regards
  mks