apt-get and synaptic stopped working

[mato]

Hi all,

When I try to install anything with either synaptic or apt-get it doesn't work. Here is output of command line I get after trying to install gambas

mato@ubuntu:~$ sudo apt-get install gambas
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
gambas-doc gambas-gb-compress gambas-gb-db gambas-gb-db-mysql
gambas-gb-db-postgresql gambas-gb-db-sqlite gambas-gb-debug gambas-gb-eval
gambas-gb-net gambas-gb-net-curl gambas-gb-qt gambas-gb-qt-editor
gambas-gb-qt-ext gambas-gb-sdl gambas-gb-vb gambas-gb-xml gambas-runtime
libsdl-mixer1.2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
gambas gambas-doc gambas-gb-compress gambas-gb-db gambas-gb-db-mysql
gambas-gb-db-postgresql gambas-gb-db-sqlite gambas-gb-debug gambas-gb-eval
gambas-gb-net gambas-gb-net-curl gambas-gb-qt gambas-gb-qt-editor
gambas-gb-qt-ext gambas-gb-sdl gambas-gb-vb gambas-gb-xml gambas-runtime
libsdl-mixer1.2
0 upgraded, 19 newly installed, 0 to remove and 8 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/4654kB of archives.
After unpacking 23.6MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: failed to open statoverride file: Input/output error
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)


Any idea about what is going on?

Mato

[heimo]

Not quite sure. I'd run:

sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get upgrade


Any help?

[mato]

I Tried the sequence of commands


sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get upgrade


The first three executed without errors and the fourth one gave me the same error:

Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: failed to open statoverride file: Input/output error
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

[mato]

I Tried the sequence of commands


sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get upgrade


The first three executed without errors and the fourth one gave me the same error:

Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: failed to open statoverride file: Input/output error
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

[blind0wl]

Can you post your df information?
df -h
and then Id try doing a sudo apt-get clean to free up some more space...sounds like a space issue possibly...

[mato]

Here is the output of df -h:


Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 8.7G 2.8G 5.5G 34% /
tmpfs 253M 0 253M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hda7 23G 6.8G 16G 31% /home
/dev/hda1 24G 19G 4.9G 80% /home/win
/dev 8.7G 2.8G 5.5G 34% /.dev
none 5.0M 2.8M 2.3M 55% /dev
//192.168.0.95/public_samba
35G 29G 6.7G 82% /home/Y



command

sudo apt-get clean

didn't help

[heimo]

Let's see if you have this file:
ls -l /usr/sbin/dpkg-statoverride

[mato]

The file /usr/sbin/dpkg-statoverride is there.

[heimo]

I can't give specific instructions at the moment, but if you can find out how to turn on debug information, verbose mode or anything that could give more information, that'd be very helpful. I'd probably try to install dpkg package ... that's a bit like chicken-egg problem you have there, because I suspect dpkg is somehow broken and to install dpkg using package management...

I would also check /var/log/messages and search for any other errors, hopefully it's not failing hard disk. Have you had unexpected power loss, hangup, freeze lately?

[mato]

The problem seems to be fixed now. I assume that some of the commands described above helped to fix the problem. I didn't reboot computer after executing those commands yesterday and it seemed they didn't have effect. However this morning after I booted the computer the problem was gone.

Thanks everybody for help.

Mato