Written by Vojtech Trefny the 1 Mar 08 at 20:31.
Category: System.
Related project:
Nothing/Others.
Status: New
Rationale
"E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report."
→ This is very frequent problem and a lot of beginners dont'know why fix the problem/resolve it.
Just please look here: see - https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+faq/52 - this FAQ located/placed on Launchpad website and during 1 month there are already 15 "related questions", so that means this is very often problem.
It would be fine thing to have some automatic utility to fix this problem, but it will be enough to make this error message more user friendly (for now it's very misleading information).
Alternatively make the message more verbose. Say which package is affected. Say what --configure -a does and offer a way to just remove the affected package.
I have also found this to be one of the major problems when trying to convince a new user to switch from mac or windows to ubuntu linux. The problem is that a lot of these people are not "computer people" and may be frightened of the terminal. Possibly, an auto wizard program could be used with several buttons representing the necessary fixes. For instance... a button version of --configure -a command, etc. The user can go through the gui program, thus feeling more comfortable.
An automatic fixing utility would be bad, because it would end in an infinite loop if a package wants to do something, that is not possible.
Instead, the package managers should stay accessible even in broken state (with a BIG warning), so the user can do something about it.
aysiu(Brainstorm moderator)
wrote on the 23 Jul 08 at 03:32
At the very least, have the error message say to run