Launchpad itself

Package list malformed/corrupt?

Asked by Mark Lee

Hi,

The awn-testing team PPA has been getting a chroot problem error when trying to build our avant-window-navigator-trunk packages. Here's the relevant portion of the build log <http://launchpadlibrarian.net/13364749/buildlog_ubuntu-hardy-amd64.avant-window-navigator-trunk_0.3.1%7Ebzr220-hardy1-1_CHROOTWAIT.txt.gz>:

Reading package lists...
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /home/buildd/build-560793-1453985/chroot-autobuild/var/lib/apt/lists/ppa.launchpad.net_awn-testing_ubuntu_dists_hardy_main_binary-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

It has also caused problems with the users who are installing the packages from our PPA, in that they have to remove the PPA from their software sources in order to reload their package lists.

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reacocard (reacocard) said : 		#1

you probably need to get the LP admins to force a full rebuild of the package list, assuming all your .deb files are good. A bad .deb file is one thing that can cause something like this, but the only time I ever saw it happen was with a checkinstall-created deb.

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Celso Providelo (cprov) said : 		#2

Is this problem still happening in https://edge.launchpad.net/~awn-testing/+archive ?

It was probably caused by a race-condition between the task which writes package lists for PPAs and the builder procedure.

When it happens, you have wait some minutes and then retry the build yourself.

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Mark Lee (malept) said : 		#3

This problem has been resolved. However, I'm not sure how it was resolved.

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Mark Lee (malept) said : 		#4

I was wrong. It happened again today, and neither retrying the builds nor deleting the offending packages and then revbumping the packages worked.

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Julien Lavergne (gilir) said : 		#5

Only a full clean for all packages of the PPA solve the problem.
If the packages list is corrupted, we can do nothing, as every "read" on the packages list crash apt (for users and chroot). So rebuild is impossible, upload something else is impossible.
I tried to delete some packages but without good results.

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Celso Providelo (cprov) said : 		#6

Mark, is it still happening ?

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Mark Lee (malept) said : 		#7

It hasn't happened since my last message. Julien is the co-maintainer of that PPA, and his solution works. However, it's far from ideal. If this happens again, I will post in this question.