A simple Mac-Roman encoded character in one of the packages file distributed via Cydia yesterday (December 28) caused a persistent crashing problem.

The problem was with macciti/zodttd's source though the actual reason for the crash is believed to be Cydia's problem with decoding the characters. 

A message posted on the ModMyi community elaborates on the problem:

The issue was caused by a unicode character used in zodttd's packages file. This character brought out a bug in cydia which caused it to not launch. (a similar problem was created in the past when another community source missed a line break between entries.) This is not the fault of anyone at macciti or zodttd this is simply a bug in cydia.

As it stands now, the issue has been fixed. However, should you still be experiencing crashing at startup, the ModMyi community folks suggest the following:

• Connect to your iphone/ipod via either ssh, mobile terminal, ifile, diskaid or some other type of usb file system browser. Browse to /var/lib/apt/lists/
• Delete cydia.zodttd-1.com_repo_cydia_dists_stable_main_binary-iphoneos-arm_Packages.
• Install the new update to cydia to fix this.

Alternatively, if you have apt7 installed, you may simply run the following code

apt-get updateIf you are looking for more information on fixing the problem, you can refer to these docs (PDF link) to fix the crashing problem using disklaid. 

If you are one of the users of jailbroken iPhones facing this problem, do let us know if this fixes the issue.

[via ModMyi]