Nigel Henry <cave.dnb <at> tiscali.fr> writes: > tried to open synaptic as root, and it opened, and about 3 secs later crashed. Known bug, there are already several bug reports about this. To fix this: rm -f /var/cache/apt/*.bin (needs root privileges, so use su or sudo). It is likely that apt had the RPM database locked while crashing, in which case you'll also have to: rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db.* (needs root privileges again). WARNING: DON'T remove any files in the /var/lib/rpm directory which do not start with an underscore. If you zap the Packages file, you won't be able to rebuild the RPM database, so you'll have to reinstall. Kevin Kofler