So I updated to 11.04 using the doc in the Library (just saw 11.10 is now available, and maybe I need to update again. After updating, when packages go to update, I get a repeating error on each package, but the packages seem to update without issue. The repeating lines are

dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 4579 package 'ffmpeg':
 error in Version string '4:SVN-r25017-1': version number does not start with digit
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 11613 package 'qt-faststart':
 error in Version string '4:SVN-r25017-1': version number does not start with digit

Sometimes the line repeats those two twice, sometimes multiple times. It seems like just a problem with that package. I am using webmin to manage my packages, so also not sure if it has something to do with this, but appears to have started with the update to Natty. Should I follow the Library doc to update to 11.10, or something else first?

Thanks

It doesn't look like ffmpeg (of which qt-faststart) is packaged in Ubuntu after 10.10, and the version number does not meet the requirements enforced by recent dpkg versions. So, "dpkg --remove ffmpeg qt-faststart" would quell the error and remove the deprecated package.

The version number, however, leads me to suspect you didn't install ffmpeg from the Ubuntu repos. What does "apt-cache policy ffmpeg" say?

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ffmpeg:
Installed: 4:SVN-r25017-1
Candidate: 4:SVN-r25017-1
Version table:
*** 4:SVN-r25017-1 0
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
4:0.6.2-1ubuntu1.1 0
500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main i386 Packages
500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-security/main i386 Packages
4:0.6.2-1ubuntu1 0
500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages

Did you install ffmpeg from a .deb at some point in the past? You can probably remove that version (apt-get remove ffmpeg) and install the stock version (apt-get install ffmpeg) and it should work.

Note that if the .deb was built with a different ffmpeg configuration, this might not be a good idea. You'll want to rebuild the .deb with a properly-formatted version field (and probably build it for a natty system, while you're at it).

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In all honesty, I really do not know. I use my VPS to host several web sites, and about 95% of those sites contents are either basic static pages, or forums (all are phpBB forums), so I am not sure how or when it would have been installed. I do know that if I installed it by choice, I was either following a Linode Library doc, either specifically for it, or it was installed as part of a whole process, or it may have been installed when I was using webmin.

If you aren't doing audio/video processing, you probably don't need it at all. It might be needed to meet a dependency, though, so if you do the apt-get remove, don't answer "y" if it wants to uninstall a whole bunch of other stuff you might need.

The Googles report that there is a phpBB plugin that does video sharing stuff, using ffmpeg, so it's possible that did it. But why it would use a random development version I don't know...

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I went ahead and did the remove and then reinstalled. Nothing seemed to blow up

Huh? It's a core package (maintained by the core team), nothing happened to it in 11.04 or 11.10, it's still there:

4:0.6.2-1ubuntu1.1 - http://packages.ubuntu.com/natty/ffmpeg
4:0.7.2-1ubuntu1 - http://packages.ubuntu.com/oneiric/ffmpeg
4:0.7.2-1ubuntu1 - http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/ffmpeg

I misread something before I posted that, and forgot that I did so. My only post-10.04 box was asleep in my backpack and I felt lazy. Good news is that I don't remember much between posts, so everything after the apt-cache output has been based on valid assumptions. (Probably.)

Thanks for catching that.

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