So I've been trying to upgrade Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit few days back and received an error:

dpkg: ../../src/archives.c:978: tarobject: Assertion `r == stab.st_size' failed.

So I followed this Ubuntu Forums post and this one.

Removed ubuntu-docs from info folder and status file.

Now whenever I try to install/remove/upgrade any package I receive an error:

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 968, in simulate

    trans.unauthenticated = self._simulate_helper(trans)

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1092, in _simulate_helper

    return depends, self._cache.required_download, 

  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 235, in required_download

    pm.get_archives(fetcher, self._list, self._records)

SystemError: E:I wasn't able to locate a file for the ubuntu-docs package. This might mean you need to manually fix this package.

When I try to install ubuntu-docs from command line, I get this output:

 BlockquoteReading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree       

Reading state information... Done

The following packages will be upgraded:

  ubuntu-docs

1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 33 not upgraded.

1 not fully installed or removed.

Need to get 1,408 kB of archives.

After this operation, 22.5 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main ubuntu-docs all 11.10.4 [1,408 kB]

Fetched 1,408 kB in 5s (265 kB/s)        

(Reading database ... 

dpkg: warning: files list file for package `ubuntu-docs' missing, assuming package has no files currently installed.

(Reading database ... 323646 files and directories currently installed.)

Preparing to replace ubuntu-docs 11.10.4 (using .../ubuntu-docs_11.10.4_all.deb) ...

Unpacking replacement ubuntu-docs ...

dpkg: ../../src/archives.c:978: tarobject: Assertion `r == stab.st_size' failed.

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg exited unexpectedly

...which looks about the same as when I started with problem, so I looked in info -- there is no package ubuntu-docs but there is entry in status so I deleted it and tried again, but as soon as I do sudo dpkg --configure -a the entry for ubuntu-docs reappears.

Any thoughts?

Edit (not as a comment to save formatting):

This thread says I need to run sudo apt-get update after removing corresponding lines from status. So I ran sudo apt-get clean followed by sudo apt-get update. But I got a message saying:

E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

After running sudo dpkg --configure -a, status file contains following lines:

Package: ubuntu-docs

Status: install reinstreq half-installed

Priority: optional

Section: doc

Version: 11.10.4

Not sure if it helps.