apt-get problem

[Yewint Ko]

Hi geeks ,
I am having problem dealing with apt-get on ubuntu 8.4 machine .
I just tried to installed subversion as a root with this command

# apt-get install subversion

the problem is as follow

Reading package lists... Error!
E: Could not open file /var/lib/dpkg/status - open (2 No such file or directory)
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

# apt-get update

long prompts and everything seems ok until the last three lines of prompt. the above error occurs at the end of update process.(I can post that long prompts if needed)

I have googled many time and visited many sites over the net, even in the ubuntu forum, to solve the problem.
But i havent solved the problem yet. Anybody here can help me out ?please.

[Stefan Wagner]

Yewint Ko wrote:

Reading package lists... Error!
E: Could not open file /var/lib/dpkg/status - open (2 No such file or directory)
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

# apt-get update

Normally on ubuntu, to run a command as root, you use sudo.

sudo apt-get install subversion

but you told us, you ran that command as root.

Do you have a root-login or by

sudo su

or

 sudo -s

?

What does

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/status

produce?

[Yewint Ko]

yes, i run it like

$su
password :

# apt-get install subversion

[Yewint Ko]

I found no such file as "status" under /var/lib/dpkg

also

ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/status

produces

ls: cannot access /var/lib/dpkg/status: No such file or directory