mjhjmtu

I have a following minimalistic sources.list file:

root@c:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main
root@c:~# apt-get update
Hit http://ftp.fi.debian.org wheezy Release.gpg
Hit http://ftp.fi.debian.org wheezy Release
Hit http://ftp.fi.debian.org wheezy/main i386 Packages
Hit http://ftp.fi.debian.org wheezy/main Translation-en
Reading package lists... Done
root@c:~# 

Now when I try to install a package, I end up with segmentation fault. For example:

root@c:~# apt-get install tcpdump
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree 
Reading state information... Done
Segmentation fault
root@c:~#

In /var/log/messages there is a following entry logged:

Mar 29 05:46:25 c kernel: [ 4677.384747] apt-get[5607]: segfault at b8647e30 ip b8647e30 sp bfaaa9c8 error 14

The last (sp) number always changes, i.e if I execute apt-get install nmap three times, then following is logged:

Mar 29 05:46:59 c kernel: [ 4711.046400] apt-get[5612]: segfault at b86cbe30 ip b86cbe30 sp bfb36ea8 error 14
Mar 29 05:47:02 c kernel: [ 4714.229648] apt-get[5616]: segfault at b8609e30 ip b8609e30 sp bfcecec8 error 14
Mar 29 05:47:03 c kernel: [ 4715.505656] apt-get[5620]: segfault at b86dae30 ip b86dae30 sp bfb4b588 error 14

I have tried with different repositories and cleaned local repository of retrieved package files. What might cause segment fault when installing a package? Is my apt-get broken?

Have you tried using strace to diagnose the problem?

I have a similar problem which seems to be related to the google-earth package -- something in the meta-data for the package causes apt-get (or some component of the apt system) to segfault.

I discovered this by using:

sudo strace -f apt-get update >log.strace-aptget 2>&1

Looking at the log file, I could see that, after reading the file /var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_earth_deb_dists_stable_Release, apt-get did a mremap() which caused a segfault. I commented out the google-earth entry in sources.list (actually, in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-earth.list) and now apt-get works fine. (Of course, I now cannot update google-earth, but at least apt-get is working.)

Hope this helps.

I have started experiencing the same thing in Precise. To workaround this issue I added a file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00bugs which contains one line:

APT::Cache-start 200000000;

The segmentation faults no longer occur. I have opened a bug report for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1445436

Run following commands: I got a fix through it.

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/locksudo cp -arf /var/lib/dpkg /var/lib/dpkg.backup
sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/status /var/lib/dpkg/status-bad
sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/status-old /var/lib/dpkg/status || sudo cp /var/backups/apt.extended_states.0 /var/lib/dpkg/status
sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/available /var/lib/dpkg/available-bad
sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/available-old /var/lib/dpkg/available
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dpkg/updates/*
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/*.bin
sudo mkdir /var/lib/apt/lists
sudo mkdir /var/lib/apt/lists/partial
sudo apt-get upgrade