Apt-get corrupted

[dwr777]

I have a dual-boot desktop controlled by GRUB with Windows XP and Kubuntu 7.10. I was in Windows doing an update (as always) to system when I lost power. When the power came back on, I tried to go back into Windows and finish the job, but it would not finish and had problems. HISTORY. Rebooted and went into my trusty Kubuntu an found that it was also having problems! It booted into a blank screen. REstarted in recovery mode and ran fsck which found several errors. allowed it to fix them all as rebooted. Desktop cam up okay and everyting looked right until I tried to use aptmanager to update a package. It gave me a message stating to the effect that the apt-get database was corrupted and I should try running apt-setup (not found) or apt-get update (gets errors and fails).
I tried apt-get -configure -a
apt_get install
apt-get autoclean
nothing worked. I did get some feedback indicating the the dpkg database may be corrupted. and gave me several errors found in the file. I tried manually fixing these but that did not fix the error or allow me to use apt-get. I just ran the Aegis virus scanner from root and it found a virus in wine. pipboot.dll has the W32/MN virus.

Now how do I get back to normal?

[dibl]

Re: Apt-get corrupted

That's a sad story, but one part of it doesn't make sense to me. If you were running Windows when the power failed, all SOFT damage should have been limited to the Windows system. I don't see how software corruption of any kind could happen in the Linux system, which is just sitting there as bits on the hard drive when it's not booted.

In the bad old days, I would suggest maybe your hard drive suffered a head crash, but modern hard drives don't do that, so it should not be anything mechanical. Although it would not hurt to run hard drive diagnostics on it just to satisfy yourself that it is in good shape.

So I'm mystified about how the Linux system got so screwed up.

I'm not much of an expert on the dpkg system, so here you go:

http://www.infodrom.org/Debian/doc/m...-pkgmaint.html

The key data files are in /var/lib/dpkg I believe, and it gets backed up daily by cron. This is actually a pretty severe problem that you have -- I think of the dpkg database as the analogue of Windows registry -- it's not a file that you want messed up.

With Windows hosed and Kubuntu close behind, you might want to consider the merits of Kubuntu 8.04, presently available in Beta version, and due to be released in a couple of weeks. For my one and only requirement to have Win XP available, I run the free VMWare Player, and run Win XP in a window on it, so it is relatively immune from the world of viruses and malware -- at least compared to a native installation. It can still get infected, but I can replace the entire installation in 15 minutes from a backup.

[stealthbanana]

Re: Apt-get corrupted

If you go into the /var/lib/dpkg directory and you should have various files appended -old

try deleting the original files and renaming the -old files back. This should restore the db back to an earlier mode.

do an apt-get update and dpkg --configure -a

hopefully this will sort it.

Odd how the windows crash affected kubuntu.

[Guest]

Re: Apt-get corrupted

if the -old files doesn't work, you have backups in /var/backups too.