Ubuntu 14.04 : subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status

Question

I'm trying to do 'upgrade' and getting following error.

$sudo apt upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  notepadqq-common
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove it.
The following packages will be upgraded:
  fonts-opensymbol
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/110 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,024 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Y
E: Invalid archive signature
E: Internal error, could not locate member control.tar.{gzbz2xzlzma}
E: Prior errors apply to /var/cache/apt/archives/fonts-opensymbol_2%3a102.6+LibO4.2.8-0ubuntu5.2_all.deb
debconf: apt-extracttemplates failed: No such file or directory
dpkg-deb: error: `/var/cache/apt/archives/fonts-opensymbol_2%3a102.6+LibO4.2.8-0ubuntu5.2_all.deb' is not a debian format archive
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/fonts-opensymbol_2%3a102.6+LibO4.2.8-0ubuntu5.2_all.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess dpkg-deb --control returned error exit status 2
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Solution

If I ran into this I would try :

sudo apt-get clean to clear the apt cache. Then run sudo apt-get update to update the package list to the latest.

Then sudo apt-get -f install Then sudo dpkg --configure -a to try to fix any installations that didn't finish and then finally sudo apt-get upgrade To try again.

Of course I would only move on if the previous command runs without errors

Try this and if you run into any errors during the process, update your question with the command and error you got stuck on.

Comments

[John Orion]

great glad to help

[Fid]

This did the trick for me, although I had the erros on Raspbian.