Fixing debian package problems

August 13, 2022

I had an issue while updating the STEM group laptop earlier, after asking on IRC I ran apt install -f which gave me the following, which I pasted to paste.debian.net

root@zleap:/home/zleap# apt install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  bsdmainutils libsasl2-modules libtexlua53 libwacom-bin ncal rpm-common
  telnet
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  texlive-lang-french
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  texlive-lang-french
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 448 not upgraded.
415 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/82.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 111 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 374220 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../texlive-lang-french_2022.20220722-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking texlive-lang-french (2022.20220722-1) ...
dpkg-deb (subprocess): decompressing archive '/var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-la
ng-french_2022.20220722-1_all.deb' (size=82270524) member 'data.tar': lzma error
: compressed data is corrupt
dpkg-deb: error: <decompress> subprocess returned error exit status 2
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-lang-french_2022.
20220722-1_all.deb (--unpack):
 cannot copy extracted data for './usr/share/doc/texlive-doc/plain/apprendre-a-p
rogrammer-en-tex/fonts/libertine-legacy.zip' to '/usr/share/doc/texlive-doc/plai
n/apprendre-a-programmer-en-tex/fonts/libertine-legacy.zip.dpkg-new': unexpected
 end of file or stream
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/texlive-lang-french_2022.20220722-1_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

The offending package seemed to be

texlive-lang-french2022.20220722-1all.deb

Asking on IRC, it was suggested that I remove this file from

/var/cache/apt/archives

which I did, then re ran

apt install -f

Which seems to have fixed the issue as I can install software normally now.