apt-get/synaptic error

thinkpada21 · posted: 2009-02-17 01:09

I tried installing the Java RE from Synaptic. Unfortunately, the package has an interactive"installer". While Synaptic's detail window showed me what was going on, there was no way I could find to supply input to the"installer".

Eventually, the installer timed put and Synaptic reported a lot of errors.

I tried again to install it the Java RE - this time with apt-get. However, I got the error:
unable to read filedescriptor flags for <package status and progress file descriptor>: Bad file descriptor

After this, every time I tried to do anything with apt-get or Synaptic, I get that error. I even tried rebooting, but still get that error.

I can only guess that the package management is corrupted, however, I have not yet found anything in the documentation to help fix this.

mariel77 · posted: 2009-02-17 05:30

Can you please post your /etc/apt/sources.list?
It may be that you have been caught in the Debian repo shift - Lenny is stable now.

If you really just lost synaptic, then from this thread:

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19909"
linktext was:"http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/showt ... hp?t=19909"
====================================
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false

To get synaptic back open a terminal
#su
#your root passowrd
#apt-get install synaptic

You may need to do a
#apt-get -f install

thinkpada21 · posted: 2009-02-17 08:39

Synaptic itself works fine - until I click Apply. Then I get the error I mentioned, above.

Here is my /etc/apt/sources.list (Except for changing the country code part to us, it is just as it was after upgraded to 7.5 from 7.2 using the upgrade script.)

Code: Select all

###
### MEPIS: Use for kernel upgrades and nvidia/ati drivers only ###
##deb ftp://ftp.mepis.com/mepis/ mepis-7.0 main

deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free  
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free  

# deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free  

deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free   

# mplayer
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ etch main 
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ testing main 

# VirtualBox
deb http://www.virtualbox.org/debian/ etch non-free 

# wicd
deb http://apt.wicd.net/ debian extras

anticapitalista · posted: 2009-02-17 09:10

Try this.

Open rox as root user and navigate to /var/lib/dpkg/info
and remove the postin postrm preinst prerm files connected with Java RE

Then open root terminal

apt-get update
apt-get -f install

If there are messages, please post them

You will need to change you repos too if you want to upgrade to antiX-M8 or keep it Lenny or Etch.

thinkpada21 · posted: 2009-02-17 10:04

The only java related files I found there appear to be for the java-common package.

I did not try the apt-get update ; apt-get -f install

Right now is not a good time for me to update to 8.0, however, I plan to do so in a few weeks.

My last update/upgrade was on Friday, Feb 13, so was before the Lenny release.

anticapitalista · posted: 2009-02-17 10:20

Remove the java-common files from there and then

apt-get clean
apt-get update
apt-get -f install

I think this is what is blocking apt-get/synaptic. If we cn get rid of it then we can start again

thinkpada21 · posted: 2009-02-17 10:27

Thanks.

I did the"apt-get clean" and got the message:
dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem

Is there any reason I should not run the suggested command?