Today when I tried to use apt-get to install the dig unix utility, I got the following error:
<pre>debian:~# apt-get install dig Reading Package Lists... Error! E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room E: Error occured while processing flite (NewVersion1) E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_dists_stable_main_binary-i386_Packages E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. </pre>

Hoping to easily fix the error and assert once and for all my mastery of linux, I performed an apt-get update. Unfortunately, all I got was another error:
<pre>Reading Package Lists... Error! E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room E: Error occured while processing flite (NewVersion1) E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.debian.org_dists_stable_main_binary-i386_Packages E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.</pre>
Great, this is fantastic.

It was time to search google for "The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened."

One site claimed that adding the following line:
<pre>APT::Cache-Limit "8388608";</pre>
to /etc/apt/apt.conf would fix the problem. This solution didn't work for me.

Another site suggested that the problem was related to the "Dynamic MMap ran out of room" portion of the error message, and that perhaps instead I should add to /etc/apt/apt.conf this line:
<pre>APT::Cache-Limit 12582912;</pre>

and amazingly this seemed to work. Wow, this seems just downright stupid..

fsck you mr. debian.

<strong>**UPDATE**</strong> I actually had to increase the value even more, to 33554432, to completely get rid of the error.