Corrupted /var/lib/dpkg/status during update to 6.10

This is what caused the error:

dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 17602 package `firefox-gnome-support':
 `Depends' field, invalid package name `l)bfontconfig1': character `)' not allowed - only letters, digits and -+._ allowed
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/logging/__init__.py", line 740, in emit
2.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
    self.flush()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.4/logging/__init__.py", line 718, in flush
    self.stream.flush()
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad fi

So it looks like the /var/lib/dpkg/status file gots corrupted during the upgrade. This might be a bug in dpkg, but it is more likely that there is some sort of hardware problem/filesystem corruption here. Does a memtest runs ok? Does checking the filesystem tells anything about problems there?

Thanks,
 Michael

Running the meemtest right now.
Please let me know the commands to check the filesystem.

Thanks,
Alex

Michael,

memtest found some bits of bad memory on this laptop. After many tries of dist-upgrade I'm back on a functional system. So let me know if there's anything I can upload to confirm/close this one.

Also I wonder if theres a bug dealing with BadRAM in Ubuntu.

Thanks,
Alex

Thanks for that information. Bad memory might well cause these symptoms so I think there probably isn't a bug in the software here.

Thanks for that information. Bad memory might well cause these symptoms so I think there probably isn't a bug in the software here.