I've had this problem a while now - and have been on countless forums, trying to work out exactly what's wrong with my server.
The problem all started when I did a large upgrade of a lot of packages
at the same time. For some unknown reason, this seems to have corrupted
my PERL installation, which means I can't do basic system admin
anymore, such as upgrading packages, adding users etc.
eg, if I try doing an apt upgrade of apache2:
debsrv:/# apt-get upgrade apache2 Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following packages will be upgraded: kernel-image-2.4.27-2-386 kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686 libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-bin libgtk2.0-common samba samba-common samba-doc smbclient smbfs squirrelmail swat vim vim-common 14 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 11 not fully installed or removed. Need to get 0B/60.0MB of archives. After unpacking 1286kB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure: line 3: BEGIN: command not found /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure: line 1: qq{: command not found /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure: line 5: use: command not found /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure: line 6: use: command not found /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure: line 7: syntax error near unexpected token `(' /usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure: line 7: ` use Debconf::Log qw(:all);' Setting up gzip (1.3.5-10sarge1) ... /usr/sbin/install-info: line 3: use: command not found /usr/sbin/install-info: line 9: =1.10.28: command not found /usr/sbin/install-info: line 10: sub: command not found /usr/sbin/install-info: line 11: =: command not found /usr/bin/print: line 13: =0: command not found /usr/bin/print: line 14: =/etc/mime.types: No such file or directory /usr/bin/print: line 15: =/usr/share/etc/mime.types: No such file or directory /usr/bin/print: line 16: =/usr/local/etc/mime.types: No such file or directory /usr/bin/print: line 17: ={HOME}/.mime.types: No such file or directory /usr/bin/print: line 18: =/usr/bin/x-terminal-emulator: No such file or directory /usr/bin/print: line 19: =application/*: No such file or directory /usr/bin/print: line 20: syntax error near unexpected token `255' /usr/bin/print: line 20: `$quotedsemi=chr(255);' /usr/sbin/install-info: line 17: syntax error near unexpected token `}' /usr/sbin/install-info: line 17: `}' dpkg: error processing gzip (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: gzip W: Couldn't stat
source package list ftp://ftp-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk
dists/proposed-updates/ Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/ftp-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk_pub_linux_debian_dists_proposed-updates_Packages)
- stat (2 No such file or directory) W: Couldn't stat
source package list http://security.debian.org stable/updates Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/security.debian.org_dists_stable_updates_binary-i386_Packages)
- stat (2 No such file or directory) W: Couldn't stat
source package list http://non-us.debian.org stable/non-US Packages
(/var/lib/apt/lists/non-us.debian.org_debian-non-US_dists_stable_non-US_binary-i386_Packages)
- stat (2 No such file or directory) W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
2 main problems: programs cannot be upgraded, and stat cannot be done on package sources.