How to repair Update Manager?

[Dave Reynolds]

I have Ubuntu 11.04 on an AMD64 machine (HP Pavilion DM1). It worked fine for a while but recently any time I try to invoke the Update Manager I get:


E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_bina ry-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

I have had some incidents of being unable to resume after sleep (until I disabled the catalyst driver) so possibly in one of those that file got hosed.

Is there some way to repair this?

Dave

[ashok.joglekar]

I have Ubuntu 11.04 on an AMD64 machine (HP Pavilion DM1). It worked fine for a while but recently any time I try to invoke the Update Manager I get:


E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_bina ry-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

I have had some incidents of being unable to resume after sleep (until I disabled the catalyst driver) so possibly in one of those that file got hosed.

Is there some way to repair this?

Dave
I am also having exactly same problem

Jogy

[TheDoctorX]

maybe is your connection ... try to see if it's ok... if it's ok backup your files and reinstall ubuntu ... for this things is the only real solution ...

[dino99]

clean the system might help

sudo apt-get autoremove

or at last remove the conflicting package seen into the path

[Dave Reynolds]

TheDoctorX: Thanks for the advice. Connection is fine. Hoping not to have to do a full re-install.

dino99: Thanks, sudo apt-get autoremove just gives a similar error message and aborts.

Looking at the file it seems the update must have tried to run when I was behind a hotel paywall, the package list contains a very messed up web page with bits of hotel sign-in html screens in it :( Does apt not verify the format of the lists it fetches?

In the end tried "sudo mv /var/lib/apt/lists/*.* ~/tmp", that allowed Update Manager to run enough to download new cached package lists. Result looks promising but not sure if this is just storing up problems for the future.

Dave

[Rubi1200]

In future, you can use these commands to deal with the problem:


sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf
sudo apt-get update

[Dave Reynolds]

In future, you can use these commands to deal with the problem:


sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf
sudo apt-get update

Thanks. Happy now I know those files can be rebuild if they missing.

Dave