This error occurs when your system's dpkg version is too old to handle .deb packages compressed with xz. Update dpkg to resolve the compatibility issue.
The dpkg package manager on your system cannot recognize or decompress the xz-compressed control.tar.xz file inside the .deb package. This is a version compatibility issue: newer packages use xz compression for the control archive, but older dpkg versions only support gzip compression (control.tar.gz). When dpkg encounters the xz-compressed member, it fails because it expects the traditional gzip format.
Run the following commands to update your dpkg package:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dpkgThis will upgrade dpkg to a version that supports xz-compressed control.tar.xz files. The fix was backported to Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) in dpkg version 1.17.5ubuntu5.8 and later.
After updating dpkg, ensure your package cache is clean and up to date:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get updateThis removes cached packages and ensures you have the latest package metadata from your repositories.
Now attempt to install or upgrade the package that was failing:
sudo apt-get install <package-name>Or to upgrade all packages:
sudo apt-get upgradeThe updated dpkg should now be able to handle xz-compressed .deb files without errors.
If you are building .deb packages and need to support older systems, you can control the compression format using dpkg-deb options. Use dpkg-deb --build -Zgzip to create control.tar.gz instead of control.tar.xz, or use sbt-native-packager with debianNativeBuildOptions in Debian := Seq("-Zgzip", "-z3"). The --uniform-compression and --no-uniform-compression flags also affect which compression format is used. For legacy Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) systems, consider upgrading to a modern LTS release (20.04 or 22.04) as Trusty reached end-of-life and only receives Extended Security Maintenance updates.
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