apt-get error

[Michael Hipp]

Net Llama! wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jun 2007, Michael Hipp wrote:
>> Anyone know what to do about this error?
>>
>> # apt-get install build-essential
>> Reading package lists... Done
>> Building dependency tree... Done
>> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>>   build-essential
>> 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
>> Need to get 0B/6826B of archives.
>> After unpacking 49.2kB of additional disk space will be used.
>> (Reading database ... dpkg: error processing
>> /var/cache/apt/archives/build-essential_11.1_i386.deb (--unpack):
>>  files list file for package `subversion' contains empty filename
>> Errors were encountered while processing:
>>  /var/cache/apt/archives/build-essential_11.1_i386.deb
>> Processing was halted because there were too many errors.
>> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
>>
>>
>> This is on Ubuntu 6.06. My knowledge of apt-get and family isn't very
>> deep. I tried 'apt-get clean' and it didn't help. I get this error about
>> 'subversion' no matter what I try to install or remove. Tried to remove
>> and re-install subversion but get the same.
> 
> Google says:
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=308727
> http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-12737.html
> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22files+list+file+for+package%22+%22contains+empty+filename%22&btnG=Google+Search

Thanks. None of these exactly contained the solution, but it got me 
close enough to do this:

   cd /var/lib/dpkg/info
   mkdir /home/michael/sub
   mv subv* /home/michael/sub
   apt-get --reinstall install subversion

And all seems happy now. This odd problem seems to affect lots of 
packages at various times according to the googling above.

Michael