From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

For the last 4 months I have relied on a 16 year old machine for
communication.

Having got my main machine to work, the old one collapsed or rather the
hard drive did. I decided to restore it using another drive.

Not so easy.

I had trouble getting the machine to boot on a Mint 22.1 installation
flash drive, then another, then a DVD and finally one of my oldest
flash drives.

But when I tried to update it in order to indstall Synaptic, I kept
running into errors.

I tried everythging I could find on the WWW but so far nothing has worked.

The last attempt ended with this:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
files list file for package 'gnome-accessibility-themes' is missing final newline

$ find . -name gnome-accessibility-themes
just returns to the prompt, so it is not a file.



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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

pinnerite wrote:

For the last 4 months I have relied on a 16 year old machine for communication.

I use old hardware a lot. I'm currently typing on a BIOS '11 box; that's pretty close at 14y.

The quickest way for us to see a lot of stuff is w/ inxi -F, but it
might also be useful to see your cpu flags. I don't know exactly how
many x/s you need for that, but 2 might be enough. inxi -Cxx.

Paste those 2 inxi/s in here.
--
Mike Easter
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

pinnerite wrote:

I had trouble getting the machine to boot on a Mint 22.1 installation
flash drive, then another, then a DVD and finally one of my oldest
flash drives.

I'm wondering about the old hardware because of the trouble booting a
live LM.
--
Mike Easter
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On 2025-08-27, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

For the last 4 months I have relied on a 16 year old machine for communication.

Having got my main machine to work, the old one collapsed or rather the
hard drive did. I decided to restore it using another drive.

Not so easy.

I had trouble getting the machine to boot on a Mint 22.1 installation
flash drive, then another, then a DVD and finally one of my oldest
flash drives.

But when I tried to update it in order to indstall Synaptic, I kept
running into errors.

I tried everythging I could find on the WWW but so far nothing has worked.

The last attempt ended with this:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
files list file for package 'gnome-accessibility-themes' is missing final newline

$ find . -name gnome-accessibility-themes
just returns to the prompt, so it is not a file.

As your were trying to boot off old hardware I would enter the possibility
that it was the USB socket which was not working.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Wed, 8/27/2025 4:41 PM, Mike Easter wrote:

pinnerite wrote:

I had trouble getting the machine to boot on a Mint 22.1 installation
flash drive, then another, then a DVD and finally one of my oldest
flash drives.

I'm wondering about the old hardware because of the trouble booting a live LM.

On an old machine, you reach in the drawer and pull out a Mint 21.3.
If that doesn't boot, THEN you've got a problem :-)

There is a Great Divide, between 21.3 and 22.1 .
It is 21.3 that "proofs" older hardware (kernel version).

I couldn't go all the way back in time, as the 440BX doesn't
even know what a DVD is, and if you connect a DVD drive,
the computer just laughs at your attempts. I think my TUV4X could
boot 21.3, given a chance. But that would be hours of work to set up now.

Obiwan, keep both Mint versions in the drawer. Change
light sabre colors as the situation demands :-)
Some jobs call for the 21.3 light sabre. Weerrr Whizzz.

I think I've got a Ubuntu 7 or 8 or so in the pile over there.
But that would be cheating.

Paul
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:12:21 +0100, pinnerite wrote:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
files list file for package 'gnome-accessibility-themes' is missing
final newline

$ find . -name gnome-accessibility-themes just returns to the prompt, so
it is not a file.

ItrCOs a package. There might be something in /var/lib/dpkg/info/.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Thu, 8/28/2025 12:25 AM, Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 27 Aug 2025 21:12:21 +0100, pinnerite wrote:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
files list file for package 'gnome-accessibility-themes' is missing
final newline

$ find . -name gnome-accessibility-themes just returns to the prompt, so
it is not a file.

ItrCOs a package. There might be something in /var/lib/dpkg/info/.

At some time in the past, the symptoms suggest an installation
was done from bad optical media. I can find one bug report, where
the people don't reach that conclusion, but apparently during the
original install, there was an error message like that, the operator
clicked "continue", the system booted OK (operator not curious),
the operator was "happy" and no longer interested in the message.

And then later, the damage gets noticed.

I checked the four files in this case, in a VM, and all terminate normally.
I copied them over and checked them in HxD.

This is one of the reasons that Ubuntu media includes hashing as part
of the startup. So that if major pieces are corrupted, the operator
is alerted there is something wrong with the media. It's an expensive
way to detect media trouble, but at a time like this, it sounds like
a good idea.

A person could "rip" their old optical media to an .iso, then
find the originally released hash for the file, and compare to the
current hash. As a means of detecting a media degradation over time.
Use your favorite tool, like a K3B or so. You can do a TORAM=yes boot
on one piece of media, install K3B, and rip another piece of media.

# Each folder has hash values you can use to check

https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint/stable/

As for the file corruption, the error message doesn't really tell
you what the syndrome actually is. There could be an entire 2048 byte
sector missing, for example.

Paul
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

On Thu, 28 Aug 2025 03:02:01 -0400, Paul wrote:

This is one of the reasons that Ubuntu media includes hashing as part of
the startup.

All the packages should also be signed. This allows you to verify their integrity, e.g. with rCLdpkg --verifyrCY.
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From Newsgroup: alt.os.linux.mint

Gordon wrote:

On 2025-08-27, pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> wrote:

For the last 4 months I have relied on a 16 year old machine for
communication.

Having got my main machine to work, the old one collapsed or rather the
hard drive did. I decided to restore it using another drive.

Not so easy.

I had trouble getting the machine to boot on a Mint 22.1 installation
flash drive, then another, then a DVD and finally one of my oldest
flash drives.

But when I tried to update it in order to indstall Synaptic, I kept
running into errors.

I tried everythging I could find on the WWW but so far nothing has worked. >>
The last attempt ended with this:

dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
files list file for package 'gnome-accessibility-themes' is missing final newline

$ find . -name gnome-accessibility-themes
just returns to the prompt, so it is not a file.

As your were trying to boot off old hardware I would enter the possibility that it was the USB socket which was not working.

he tried to install from a DVD also.-a 22.1 is for newer hardware, so I
would try an earlier LM version.
--
Linux Mint 22.1

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