Problems updating packages

Question

I am using a RasPi 2 running the latest version of Raspbian (as of 12/5/2016).

uname -a produces this:

Linux raspberrypi 4.4.11-v7+ #888 SMP Mon May 23 20:10:33 BST 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux

Here is the error message produced by the command below:

$ aptitude update; aptitude upgrade

... 
...
...
Preconfiguring packages ...
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
 files list file for package `psmisc' contains empty filename
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Why is this happening?

Answer 1

Try the following command: sudo dpkg --configure -a

Answer 2

prolly you hit a bug. to avoid such situations its a good idea to use apt-listbugs

apt-get install apt-listbugs

apt gonna tell you when a package is buggy and you may want to pine it with "p"

have fun.