Something is broken in apt/dpkg, how to recover?

[Chris Green]

On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 10:08:24AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 10:05:56AM +0100, Chris Green wrote:
> > Something is very broken in the depths of apt/dpkg/synaptic on my
> > system.
> > 
> > Any attempt at running apt-get results in a segmentation fault and
> > also any attempt to run synaptic fails - it authenticates then the GUI
> > appears but before it populates with lists etc. it crashes.
> > 
> > I *suspect* that it's something in the 'update' part of apt that's
> > broken, if I do "show details" on the crash report from synaptic it
> > says the executable is /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check.py.
> > 
> > How do I fix this?  I can't use synaptic or apt to reinstall anything.
> > 
> Further information, if I run /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check.py it
> just core dumps, which is rather odd for a Python program.  How can I
> diagnose further?
> 
It's OK, a bit of Googling found the fix, it's a corrupted apt
database. 

I just did:-
    rm -rf /var/cache/apt/*.bin

... and all seems well again.  Phew!  :-)

-- 
Chris Green