Package: dpkg Version: 1.16.9 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
I discovered this in the installation log of a freshly installed wheezy test system. The log contained messages like this: dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 219 package 'libtext-wrapi18n-perl': missing description I was able to reproduce it after installation using apt-get install. See for example this run: root@skolelinuxtest:~# LANG=C apt-get install kde-i18n-nn Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: kde-l10n-nn The following NEW packages will be installed: kde-i18n-nn kde-l10n-nn 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 1410 kB of archives. After this operation, 5903 kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Get:1 http://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main kde-l10n-nn all 4:4.8.4-2 [1403 kB] Get:2 http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/main kde-i18n-nn all 4:4.4.5-1 [7014 B] Fetched 1410 kB in 1s (1248 kB/s) dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 219 package 'libtext-wrapi18n-perl': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 296 package 'libustr-1.0-1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 471 package 'debconf': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 720 package 'dash': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 1384 package 'coreutils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 1571 package 'debianutils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 2058 package 'login': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 3292 package 'libuuid1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 3604 package 'lsb-base': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 4765 package 'ncurses-base': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 4869 package 'libpam0g:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 5374 package 'bsdutils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 5495 package 'sensible-utils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 6915 package 'ncurses-bin': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 6948 package 'perl-base': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 7012 package 'sysv-rc': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 8614 package 'libsepol1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 8706 package 'libpam-modules:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 8786 package 'tzdata': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 9138 package 'libsemanage1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 10439 package 'diffutils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 11212 package 'tar': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 11688 package 'libmount1': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 12084 package 'zlib1g:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 13188 package 'libgcc1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 14136 package 'base-files': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 14260 package 'mount': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 14514 package 'libtext-iconv-perl': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 15042 package 'libncurses5:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 17250 package 'libattr1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 17664 package 'sed': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 18677 package 'e2fslibs:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 19291 package 'base-passwd': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 19618 package 'libcomerr2:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 19786 package 'mawk': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 20782 package 'debconf-i18n': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 20945 package 'grep': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 22483 package 'passwd': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 22655 package 'hostname': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 22883 package 'libacl1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 22966 package 'libpam-runtime': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23305 package 'sysvinit': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23421 package 'libslang2:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23505 package 'initscripts': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23531 package 'libblkid1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23674 package 'libss2:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23707 package 'libsemanage-common': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23760 package 'libpam-modules-bin': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23850 package 'findutils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 23999 package 'xz-utils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 24791 package 'e2fsprogs': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 25215 package 'liblzma5:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 25793 package 'libdb5.1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 25988 package 'insserv': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 26149 package 'gzip': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 26199 package 'dpkg': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 26658 package 'liblocale-gettext-perl': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 28164 package 'libbz2-1.0:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 28987 package 'libtinfo5:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 29578 package 'gcc-4.7-base:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 29721 package 'libc-bin': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 30351 package 'sysvinit-utils': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 30566 package 'multiarch-support': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 31655 package 'libselinux1:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 31910 package 'libc6:i386': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 33357 package 'bash': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 33474 package 'util-linux': missing description dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 35763 package 'libtext-charwidth-perl': missing description Selecting previously unselected package kde-l10n-nn. (Reading database ... 138534 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking kde-l10n-nn (from .../kde-l10n-nn_4%3a4.8.4-2_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package kde-i18n-nn. Unpacking kde-i18n-nn (from .../kde-i18n-nn_4%3a4.4.5-1_all.deb) ... Setting up kde-l10n-nn (4:4.8.4-2) ... Setting up kde-i18n-nn (4:4.4.5-1) ... root@skolelinuxtest:~# Looking in /var/lib/dpkg/available, I find entries like this, where there is a "Description-en" field but no "Description" field. Package: libtext-wrapi18n-perl Priority: required Section: perl Installed-Size: 28 Maintainer: Anibal Monsalve Salazar <ani...@debian.org> Architecture: all Version: 0.06-7 Depends: libtext-charwidth-perl Filename: pool/main/libt/libtext-wrapi18n-perl/libtext-wrapi18n-perl_0.06-7_all.deb Size: 9004 MD5sum: 5608c08e10e79269e391f02856f96ec5 Description-en: internationalized substitute of Text::Wrap This module is a substitution for Text::Wrap, supporting multibyte characters such as UTF-8, EUC-JP, and GB2312, fullwidth characters such as east Asian characters, combining characters such as diacritical marks and Thai, and languages which don't use whitespaces between words such as Chinese and Japanese. . It provides wrap(). Homepage: http://search.cpan.org/search?module=Text::WrapI18N Description-md5: 7cfec94f97ab774b331a41f9dbcb99e1 Tag: devel::lang:perl, devel::library, implemented-in::perl, role::devel-lib, use::text-formatting, works-with::text SHA1: dc961f5d84b71ac26f85109356d16234c44f9482 SHA256: 88fb2394dafcfe3b1aae18c081ac446ad7d18c920999a4f578fc2931ad0664cc Perhaps that is the cause of these reports? Should dpkg accept either Description or Description-en as a valid description? -- System Information: Debian Release: wheezy/sid APT prefers stable-updates APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=nb_NO.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=nb_NO.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages dpkg depends on: ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.6-4 ii libc6 2.13-37 ii liblzma5 5.1.1alpha+20120614-2 ii libselinux1 2.1.9-5 ii tar 1.26-4 ii zlib1g 1:1.2.7.dfsg-13 dpkg recommends no packages. Versions of packages dpkg suggests: ii apt 0.9.7.6 -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-dpkg-bugs-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
