update-alternatives: error or eof reading /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/gnome-video-thumbnailer for update_mode ()

Here is the error:

Setting up totem-gstreamer (2.25.92-0ubuntu2) ...
update-alternatives: error or eof reading /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/gnome-video
-thumbnailer for update_mode ()
dpkg: error processing totem-gstreamer (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2

Could you please attach the file /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/gnome-video
-thumbnailer to this bugreport?

That file is empty.

Its unclear what is causing this issue, but I assign to dpkg for now as the file should not be empty.

This is likely caused by the lack of sync of the administrative file when it's updated by update-alternatives. With ext4 it is some possible under some conditions that the file was moved in place before that its content has been written...

I have pushed a fix for this in upstream's git repository: 0e0e26cb8e9e3b8e3a60c329d8ea0c6e5445742c

It will be fixed in Ubuntu the next time we sync dpkg >= 1.16.1.

This bug was fixed in the package dpkg - 1.16.1ubuntu1

---------------
dpkg (1.16.1ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * Resynchronise with Debian. Remaining changes:
    - Merge from git://git.debian.org/users/hertzog/dpkg.git
      pu/multiarch/full for multiarch support.
    - On upgrade from 1.16.0~ubuntu[1-3], if /var/lib/dpkg/info/$arch is a
      directory, migrate the contents to var/lib/dpkg/info; and handle the
      reverse on downgrade. This does not handle metadata for packages of
      foreign architectures.
    - Add DPKG_UNTRANSLATED_MESSAGES environment check so that higher-level
      tools can get untranslated dpkg terminal log messages while at the
      same time having translated debconf prompts. This is useful for tools
      that hide the dpkg terminal by default and use apport for bug
      reporting with the untranslated error message.
    - Add /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch as a conffile on amd64, so that
      users are guaranteed to always have it after upgrade even if they
      don't use update-manager for the upgrade itself.
  * Continue exporting compiler flags in dpkg-buildpackage, since we do not
    want to regress hardening support in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. We will revisit
    this for Ubuntu 12.10.

dpkg (1.16.1) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Raphaël Hertzog ]
  * Dpkg::Deps: Implement new "reset" method and bump module version to 1.01
    due to this.
  * Improved description of --search in dpkg-query(1). Closes: #621066
    Thanks to Lars Buitinck <email address hidden> for the patch.
  * Let update-alternatives fsync() its administrative files before
    moving them in place to avoid empty files with some filesystems.
    LP: #344019
  * Tighten the regexp used by dpkg-source to ignore the .pc directory of
    quilt. Thanks to Mike Hommey for noticing the problem.
  * Change behaviour of dpkg-source's --extend-diff-ignore to also
    extend the current diff-ignore if it has already been set.
  * Fix dependency checking code to consider a dependency on a virtual
    package provided by a package in triggers-pending status as satisfied.
  * Do not fail when encountering a pre-dependency in triggers-awaited state,
    instead process the awaited triggers. Closes: #526774
  * "any" no longer hides "all" in the Architecture field of a .dsc.
  * Fix dpkg --remove to really remove the triggers from the various
    internal files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/triggers/. Closes: #525160
  * Avoid a perl warning in dpkg-gensymbols when no symbols file has been
    generated (because it would have been empty). Closes: #626684
  * Re-enable the Package-List field but drop the Architecture column since we
    have no clear use case yet. It can always be added later on.
    Also drop the source line since it duplicates other fields.
    Closes: #619131
  * Add the extraction part of Dpkg::Source::Package to the supported API.
    Useful to extract source packages without having to depend on dpkg-source
    (and hence dpkg-dev).
  * Add the Dpkg::Vendor module to the supported API. Useful for lintian
    when dpkg-dev is absent.
  * Check presence of required parameters in dpkg-vendor. Closes: #628726
    Thanks to Niels Thykier <n...