apt-get … Segmentation Faulty Tree

I have tried to use both Synaptic and apt-get, Running apt-get install (anything) from the command line (as root) yeilds this result:

root@dean-laptop:/# apt-get install netselect
Reading package lists… Done
Segmentation faulty tree… 0%

I’ve done some GOOGLING and it seems this bug has been seen before,
but no intelligent handling has been added to apt. See bug Bug#84277
where Jason Gunthorpe writes:

> apt-get segfaults w/out (in my opinion) any reason:

This has always been traced back to file corruption in /var/cache/apt/*.bin

If you can erase those files and run the apt command and have it work then
that is definately the problem.

Nobody has ever been able to reproduce it, unless they have buggy hardware
:>

Jason

So I suspect corrupted data files. delete /var/cache/apt/*.bin followed by “apt-get update” to reset apt.Which indeed fixed this error condition.

but that’s very strange,My Laptop does not not have buggy hardware, apt-get has been working fine from the start.

22 thoughts on “apt-get … Segmentation Faulty Tree”

  2. Thank you very much!

    A few minutes ago, Segmentation Fault occured in Synaptic. I couldn’t find a solution until i read the article. You helped me a lot. Thanks…

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  9. Thanks from me as well. The error was caused when trying to install emacs but one of the emacs-common file got corrupted or didn’t finish downloading or something, yet apt-get wasn’t aware of it. It’s a shame there’s no “check downloaded files” command line option to apt-get. I just ended up using your fix and deleted everything, but there has to be a better way.

  10. Thanks so much. I don’t know how I found this in my searching, but all of a sudden I wasn’t able to install or remove anything in ubuntu feisty, and your suggestion to delete those bin files completely solved my problem. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

  11. worked like a charm…i dont htink i have buggy HW…happened to me for the first time in many months…on a Virtual Machine (if that matters)

  16. This fix (deleting the /var/cache/apt/*.bin files) also works on Ubuntu 8.04.

    I wish “clean” would do just that. Seems logic to me that clean would remove the cache too… since it’s supposed to remove the archive files (apparently stored in the “archives” folder at the same place as the cache.)

    But then again, who am I to complain? apt-get has worked as a charm for me since somewhere around 2005 or so… before that I used urpmi (I think) in mandrake and it was a *pain*.

    Again, thanks a load for the fix!

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  18. The /var/cache/apt/*.bin files were not present in my system (Ubuntu 8.04.1) however, I ran apt-get update to see what would happen and . . . voila! solved. Like a charm. Thank you.

  19. Thanks this worked on my 9.04 tablet system. Had some disk issues and cleaning up the system messed the package managers up. removing the *.bin files fixed the issue

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