Ubuntu
gnome-terminal package

/var........failed to open package into file.......

Asked by mikew

hi, I am pretty new to all this, and ancient with it! I am trying to update/upgrade a newly-installed Linux mint 4. They all download fine (209 packages), but when it comes to upgrade I get the following error message;

E: /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.6.1-ubuntu10_i386.deb failed to open package into file
/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control for reading.

I have tried using sudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo apt-get install clean/update/-f install/clean/update/upgrade/autoremove, but I still get stuck at the same point with the same error message.
Is there some way I can put the missing file (tmp.ci/control) into dpkg? Or is there a more elegant solution?
Whatever, I need HELP!!

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Revision history for this message
mikew (mikewstalbans) said : 		#1

I have tried to sudo mkdir tmp.ci/control but when I go back to update/upgrade the folder has disappeared. Anyone out there who can help please?

Revision history for this message
mikew (mikewstalbans) said : 		#2

re-loaded linux mint and after much trouble in updating and upgrading, now seems(!!) to work ok

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said : 		#3

I've got exactly the same problem. As you can see »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« cannot be accessed and it's also not helpful to create it since it gets removed during installation. I've tried a lot of things and I cannot fix it.

Log started: 2009-03-24 14:02:26
dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von /var/cache/apt/archives/libgs8_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_i386.deb (--unpack):

 Konnte Paket-Infodatei »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« nicht zum Lesen öffnen: No such file or directory

dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von /var/cache/apt/archives/ghostscript_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_i386.deb (--unpack):

 Konnte Paket-Infodatei »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« nicht zum Lesen öffnen: No such file or directory

dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von /var/cache/apt/archives/ghostscript-x_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_i386.deb (--unpack):

 Konnte Paket-Infodatei »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« nicht zum Lesen öffnen: No such file or directory

dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von /var/cache/apt/archives/liblcms1_1.16-7ubuntu1.2_i386.deb (--unpack):

 Konnte Paket-Infodatei »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« nicht zum Lesen öffnen: No such file or directory

dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von /var/cache/apt/archives/gs-gpl_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_all.deb (--unpack):

 Konnte Paket-Infodatei »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« nicht zum Lesen öffnen: No such file or directory

Fehler traten auf beim Bearbeiten von:

 /var/cache/apt/archives/libgs8_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_i386.deb

 /var/cache/apt/archives/ghostscript_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_i386.deb

 /var/cache/apt/archives/ghostscript-x_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_i386.deb

 /var/cache/apt/archives/liblcms1_1.16-7ubuntu1.2_i386.deb

 /var/cache/apt/archives/gs-gpl_8.61.dfsg.1-1ubuntu3.1_all.deb

Log ended: 2009-03-24 14:02:28

Revision history for this message
A. Denton (aquina) said : 		#4

Hy!

I was able to solve that problem. Believe it or not but while I wrote a shellscript I messed something up and overwrote the file "/bin/tar". It had 0 (ZERO) bytes then and this the apt-get package management system was no more able to unpack any package.

The resulting errormessage "Could not open »/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control« to read: No such file or directory" was of course a bit misleading. It wasn't a directory, file system or permissions problem. The archives simply couldn't get extracted without the tar GNU utility. :-)