dpkg: serious warning: file list file for package 'package' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed - can't install any packages

[Ryan Pugatch]

Florian Diesch wrote:
> Ryan Pugatch <rpug at tripadvisor.com> writes:
> 
>> Interesting issue.. my machine (thinkpad t61) has had an issue where the 
>> file system would randomly become read only.  
> 
> That usually caused by a file system error.
> Often things like that mean your disc is about to die.
> 
>> I think it has something to do with the machine going in to standby..
>> it seems to happen shortly after waking up.  Anyway, usually after a
>> few times of this happening I have to run fsck and then everything is
>> back to normal.  Unfortunately, this time, it appears something was
>> really hosed and there were a lot of unattached inodes when I ran
>> fsck.  Everything seems fine, though, except for the part where I
>> can't install anything with apt.  It seems that dpkg thinks that none
>> of my packages are installed.
>>
>> See: http://paste.ubuntu.com/251393/
> 
> That looks quite bad. A lot of the *.list files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/
> are missing so the package manager doesn't know anymore which files
> belong to which package. 
> 
> Most likely there are other files missing or damaged, too.
> 
> 
>> Not really sure what to do at this point.  It would be nice to make it 
>> work again, otherwise I'll have to reload the machine which I'd like to 
>> avoid doing.
> 
> I'd reinstall the system, if possible on a new disc (replacing the disc
> is quite simple on a Thinkpad).
> 
> 
>    Florian

Thanks for your advice.  If I need to reinstall, I had planned on using 
a new disk just in case.  But I don't think that the disk is bad.  The 
FS would only go read only when I'm working mobile and having put the 
machine in standby.  Something definitely would get corrupted when it 
would happen.  Is there no magic way to regenerate the *.list files? 
Heh, I'm more of a yum/rpm guy so I'm not as knowledgeable about apt/dpkg.

-- 
Ryan Pugatch
Systems Administrator, TripAdvisor