Re: Bug#60399: crashes on installation

[Daniel Martin <Daniel.Martin@jhu.edu>]

Brian May <bmay@csse.monash.edu.au> writes:

> False conclusion #1: now, it seems to crash regardless of if mandb is
> running or not. ARGGHH!! However, I have left in that in the message,
> in case it gives anybody else some ideas.

I seem to remember once upon a time that man would crash and burn if
one somehow had a corrupt index.bt file.  Could it be that a partially
completed install produces such a corrupt file (i.e. could it be that
whatever mandb does in the background is rebuilding this, and being
only half-way done means the resulting file seems corrupt), and that
an existing but corrupt index file causes havoc?

I would suggest backing up all your index.bt files, rm'ing them and
then attempt installing again (this should be doable with
   tar czf index.bt.tar.gz `find /var/cache/man -name index.bt`
   rm `find /var/cache/man -name index.bt`
)

If you discover that you can make the install succeed when you have
rm'ed your index.bt files, and yet fail again when you restore
them...