Error: version number does not start with digit

Question

i'm installing Adobe Air on Ubuntu v11.04. The installation process is successful but when I tried to install an air application, errors occurred.

Here's the usual error I've got from the .appdata/Adobe/AIR/Logs/Install.log:

[airinstall:20544][ERR] Error occurred during rpm install operation; 
beginning rollback:ErrorEvent type="error" bubbles=false cancelable=false 
eventPhase=2 text=" error: dpkg: error processing /tmp/FlashTmp.FbSCaL/setup.deb
(--install):; parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/tmp.ci/control' near line 2 package
'myapp.74249ff9cb321f1d45f6ea93a89630d1be111ef2.1':; error in Version string
'V1.48.40': version number does not start with digit;
Errors were encountered while processing:; /tmp/FlashTmp.FbSCaL/setup.deb" 
errorID=1]

I've followed every instructions on how to install adobe air on ubuntu with user root. As per research, this has something to do with the version policy of dpkg but I don't know how to configure dpkg to ignore versioning. How to solve this? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I have successfully installed my air app with no version number does not start with digit error. What I did was to downgrade my dpkg-1.16.0 to dpkg-1.15.8 using the following command:

 dpkg --force-downgrade -i /pathofnewdpkg/dpkg_1.15.8.4ubuntu3_i386.deb

I have downloaded the older package here.

Since the version-policy is enforced on the current version of dpkg, the dpkg-1.16.0, installing an air app that violates this versioning policy of Debian will really cause an error.

Answer 2

For me on (L)Ubuntu 15.10, it was as simple as changing the version, from "stable" to "1":

*****************************************
**** Debian package creation selected ***
*****************************************

This package will be built according to these values: 

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@anon ]
1 -  Summary: [ redis - web interface ]
2 -  Name:    [ redis ]
3 -  Version: [ stable ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ amd64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ redis-stable ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]
11 - Provides: [ redis ]
12 - Conflicts: [  ]
13 - Replaces: [  ]

Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue: 3
Enter new version: 
>> 1

Answer 3

dpkg --force-bad-version -i Will work. Just had to do that with mjpg streamer.