When apt/dpkg reports messages like "files list file for package … missing; assuming package has no files currently installed", it usually means the package’s .list metadata under /var/lib/dpkg/info is gone. The safest fix is to reinstall the affected packages.

Below is a small workflow and script to automate the reinstall of every package mentioned in the warnings.

Example warning output

You may see lines similar to:

dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'xorg-docs-core' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'libgcc1:amd64' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed
dpkg: warning: files list file for package 'xfonts-base' missing; assuming package has no files currently installed

Steps

1. Save the wranings to a file

• Copy/paste the warnings in to a text file, for example warnings.txt.

2. Create a reinstall script

Create a file named fix-missing-lists.sh in the same directory as warnings.txt with the following content:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

LOG_FILE=${1:-warnings.txt}

if [[ ! -r "$LOG_FILE" ]]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 <warnings-file>" >&2
  exit 1
fi

# Extract package names between single quotes, deduplicate, and reinstall
mapfile -t packages < <(
  grep -E "^dpkg: warning: files list file for package '" "$LOG_FILE" \
    | awk -F"'" '{print $2}' \
    | sort -u
)

if (( ${#packages[@]} == 0 )); then
  echo "No packages found in $LOG_FILE" >&2
  exit 0
fi

# Pick apt-get if available, otherwise apt
APT_TOOL="apt-get"
command -v apt-get >/dev/null 2>&1 || APT_TOOL="apt"

count=1
for pkg in "${packages[@]}"; do
  echo "[$count/${#packages[@]}] Reinstalling $pkg"
  sudo "$APT_TOOL" -y --reinstall install "$pkg"
  ((count++))
done

3. Make it executable

chmod +x fix-missing-lists.sh

4. Run the script

sudo ./fix-missing-lists.sh warnings.txt

Alternative: Detect missing .list files without pasting logs

You can also scan dpkg’s info directory directly and reinstall any package whose .list file is missing:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

# Enumerate installed packages and check their .list files
mapfile -t pkgs < <(
  dpkg-query -W -f='${binary:Package}\n' \
    | while read -r p; do
        [[ -e "/var/lib/dpkg/info/${p}.list" ]] || echo "$p"
      done \
    | sort -u
)

if (( ${#pkgs[@]} == 0 )); then
  echo "No packages with missing .list files detected"
  exit 0
fi

APT_TOOL="apt-get"
command -v apt-get >/dev/null 2>&1 || APT_TOOL="apt"

sudo "$APT_TOOL" -y --reinstall install "${pkgs[@]}"