Sudo aptitude search produces bus error

Question

I've got a strange aptitude error while performing search:

$ sudo aptitude search pcre
Bus error
$ sudo aptitude search libpcre
Bus error
$ sudo aptitude autoclean 
Bus errorackage lists... 0%

What is wrong here? How do I fix this?

aptitude update does not work either - it ends up with the same bus error

UPDATE: Accordingly to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/212466/what-is-a-bus-error the error refers to segfault, but still, how do I fix it?

Answer 1

Try this suggestion by Michael Vogt on Launchpad:

Could you please try to remove /var/cache/apt/*.bin ? And see if that helps?